
nBR.\R\ OFCOVRF- 



nooibfissMq3< 




aass_ ^; 
Book-— lUV'^^ 



*^u 



^ >j N -■ VOLS. 






Bastiles of tt?e (^o^federaey 



JEFFERSON DAVIS 



BEING A Narrative of the Treatment of Union 

PRISONERS IN THE MILITARY PRISONS OF THE SOUTH 
DURING THE WAR OF THE REBELLION. FROM 
OFFICIAL RECORDS OF THE UNITED STATES 'ft AR 
DEPARTMENT, REPORTS BV COMMITTEES OF CON- 
GRESS, CAPTURED CONFEDERATE ARCHIVES, AND 
FROM EVIDENCE TAKEN AT THE TRIAL OF CAPTAIN 
HENRY WIKZ, IN I860, AND FROM THE PERSONAL 
EXPERIENCES OF THE AUTHOR DURING TWENTY 
MONTHS CAPTIVITY IN SiX MILITARY PRISONS OF 
THE SOUTH. WITH A REVIEW OF THE EXCHANGE 

Controversy. 



FRANK E. MORAN 

Late captain of Company " H," 73d New York Volunteers, and late Historian of 
'^''*' "^ theNationalAssociationofUnionEx-prisonersofWar 

Author of '' colonel Rose's Tunnel at Libby Prison" (C™- ^J— -)' 
and of " Sketches of Field, Prison and Escape" in the 

PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY TiMES and 

other journals 



PRINTED FOR THE FAMILY OF THE AUTHOR 

1319 Argyle Ave. 
BALTIMORE, Maryland 



E 4// 

■f1 11. 



(' 



>' 



a 



y.\> 




v 



V^' 





lAPTA N FRAN^ t MuRAN 



PREFACE 

IN adding this modest contribution to the annals 
of the Civil War, the writer has been actuated 
by motives sufficiently stated in the introductory 
pages, and not with the intention, much less the wish, 
to cast a shade o£ disparagement upon the more 
voluminous narratives of such writers as John Mc- 
Elroy, Warren Lee, Goss, Ambrose Spencer, Albert 
D. Richardson, Junius Henri Browne, Willard, Glazier 
and others, whose pens have pictured with graphic 
fidelity and eloquence the tragic and pathetic scenes 
which they witnessed while sharing captivity with 
him in the military prisons of the South. 

If a reason is required besides those given in 
the text for this publication at this time, it seems to 
be supplied by the posthumous paper of JefiFerson 
Davis on " Anderson ville," begun in BelforcTs 
Magazine for the present month (January, 1890). 
The writer has at irregular intervals since the 
war contributed to the newspapers of Philadelphia, 
New York and other cities a large number of sketches 
and reminiscences of his twenty months' experiences 
and observations in six of the chief war prisons of 
the South. These sketches have been mainly con- 
fined to the narration of personal adventures of hia 
comrades and his own in their various escapes and 
recaptures, and of the less sombre features of prison 



iv. riCKFACK. 

lifo, ft Hfrif.s Hj»|)enrin«^ in Issl-'J in tlu- Pliilnilrljtliid 
Wrckhj Tiinrs: hin latest contrihutioii In'in^ liis 
illustiatetl artiflo in the Crnliirif Mnijuzitu- for 
March, Is^S, eutitle<l '•Colonel Kose's Tunnel at 
Lihity Prison." 

lij none of these fragmentary nicnioii-H of his 
captivity has he toucheil, heyonil hrief and inciih-ntal 
mention, the suhject i>f the tnalmrnt of the I'nion 
prisoinTs in the S<»uth. That he has vontureil to 
do HO now Avas not an act of his jM^rsonal choice 
wholly, l)ut one whii-h circumstances, amply set 
forth els«'where, seemed to render a puKlic and 
patriotii- dutv. 

As a soKlitT Ix'arinij^ four wounds receivetl in 
battle, with the ilecper physical hurts intiicteil in 
the prisons of the South, and as the only one o( 
three wounded brothers who has survived the cruel- 
ties in those fejirful death-|H*ns, he feels that after 
four years of humble btit faithful service to the 
country in its need, he and his pristm comrades have 
at least as le<,Mtimate ri^dit to bo heard as I'uion 
witnesses in Northern ma^'a/ines and newspaj)ers, 
as have their jailers. 

That the |M>st-mortem account of Andersonville 
by Jefferson Davis will attract the interest of a vast 
numi)er of readers, is fully assure«l by th«> ccmspic- 
uous place ho tilled in war histt)ry; by his recent 
death; and by reason of the |M»culiar relations that 
inseparably link his name with the treatment of the 
Federal pri.soners. It would be fortunate for his 



PREFACE. V. 

fame if it could also secure him the acquittal he 
seeks thus tardily, and in the last year of his life, of 
the awful iniquity with which an overwhelming 
majority of his countrymen have charged him, and 
believe him guilty. 

Late in the evening of his days, and a quarter 
of a century after the grave has closed over sixty 
thousand Union martyrs of those cruel prisons, he 
awakened to the truth that the plaudits of a Section 
is not the verdict of a Nation, nor the final judgment 
that history will carry to posterity. 

There is something painful and pathetic in the 
spectacle of this aged and enfeebled man as he 
charges his last publishers (after a peevish quarrel 
with the others), to send his last plea of innocence, 
unmutilated, to the country. 

His wronged but forbearing countrymen will 
not grudge him this parting favor; but the truth 
must stand and the irrevocable verdict awaits. 

The mighty crime and guilt of Andersonville 
will cling to the name of Jefferson Davis when his 
monument is dust, when the records of the bloody 
sectional revolt which he led are eaten by worms, 
and until the Divine hand shall draw over the men 
and deeds of time the mantle of oblivion. 

THE AUTHOE. 

Philadelphia, January, 1890. 



INTRODUCTION. 

IF an alieu unfamiliar with our history had landed 
on these shores anywhere south of Mason and 

Dixon's line during the first fortnight of De- 
cember, 1889, and had seen the National flag half- 
masted on the public buildings, and populous cities 
festooned with sable symbols of mourning, he would 
have been justified in the conclusion that the Ameri- 
can people had been bereaved by the death of some 
patriot or statesman of the first magnitude. Nor 
would the impression have been dispelled when he 
opened the morning papers that announced the death 
of Jefferson Davis, and read the eloquent tributes 
paid by Southern contemporaries to his public career 
and character. The absence of these signs of p^^blic 
regard and sorrow at the North — and at the National 
Capital in particular — would have been so conspicu- 
ous as to excite the traveler's surprise, and would 
have led him to seek a solution of the interesting 
problem which these striking contrasts presented. 
Such an investigation would have acquainted him 
with the story of the Great Rebellion of 1861-5, and 
with the stirring political events that led to the with- 
drawal of the Southern states under an avowed con- 
stitutional right and by the act of secession. 

It is not purposed in this narrative, however, 
to review the political creed or career of the dead 
Southern chief or his followers. Nor will it be 



viii, ISTUOhlCTKJS. 

nttomju.'.l to l>««little tlio renown of tsoMirrs like J.t'o 
or .larkson. nor to dim the splendor of Southern 
valor so conspicuously displayi'd, an.l, alas! so do- 
j»loral)ly wasted ujHtn a thousand hattle-fields. It is 
rather Si)u<;ht to submit the honest an<l candid re- 
view ])y an untitleil I'nii^n Volunteer of a series of 
I'vents in niJiny of which Ije particijwited. He will 
deal with that pathetic chapter of the Rehejlion 
which treats (»f the Union prisoners of war, and the 
relation of Jeir»'rson Davis thereto. He will present 
a ;.,dimpse — a description is not possible — of their 
unexampled sutferinj^s in military prisons in the 
South, and show in how <,'reat a measure their heroic 
sacrifices ami devotion through a fearful ordeal, 
hastened the overthrow of the reJH'llion. and earned 
them the veneration of tlieir country. 

A committee in Congress, after an exhaustive 
inijuiry into the subject, (hn-lared but recently that 
" Tlie treatment of tiie Union prisoners Ijy the rebel 
authorities must be considered in tlu' light of history 
tht« most cruel aiitl inhuman known among civiliz.eil 
peoj.le in miMlern times." In supi>ort of this wo arc 
not compelled to rely on the testimony of the suf- 
ferers or their friends. The flood of testimony that 
proves the fearful ini(piity of .Vmh'rsonville, Florence, 
Uichmond. Salisbury and lielli» Isle leaves an honest 
doubt unhappily impossibh>. The facts staml proven 
ev.'u without the »»vidence of a single Uni«m soldier 
who has survive<l a confinement in those drea<lful 
p.M- iif .iii.lty. p»>stilence, and death. 



INTRODUCTION. ix. 

It is not unnoticed that there is a numerous and 
respectable class o£ our people who, from mixed 
motives, are opposed to the public discussion of this 
subject at this time. A class at the North profess to 
regard its ventilation as impolitic, arguing that it 
will tend to kindle anew the sectional passions and 
prejudices engendered by the Civil War and delay a 
return of the fraternal concord so essential to assure 
the peace and permanence of the Union. The South- 
ern wing of this class who took part in or actively 
sympathized with the "lost cause" are naturally 
desirous that their fallen leaders shall pose in history 
as defeated patriots in a righteous cause who yielded 
only after a mighty defense to superior force, and 
that their cause and its leaders shall have a respect- 
able if not heroic sepulchre. 

Fully appreciating the motives that inspire the 
opposition of these worthy people to a recapitulation 
of this phase of our war annals, the writer who spent 
twenty months in six military prisons in the South 
cannot, in the light of his experience then and his 
observations since, concur in their conclusion, nor 
indorse their method of insuring sectional harmony, 
that most devoutly wished-for consummation. 

If a reason is sought for shedding all possible 
light on the history of Southern prisons while a part 
of the captives as well as of their guards yet survive, 
that reason is at hand. The shelves of our public 
libraries are already bending beneath the weight of 
Southern books, pamphlets and printed addresses, 



X. isricoiirrrios. 

all uniting \n n chorus of ih'iiiftl of tin* atrociiu'.s in 
SoutluTu prisons, notwithstanding tho clear ami 
jMisitivt' ovitlonct' with which l>otli the survivors and 
th»» «,Miarils of those placos have (iverwhelrnetl them. 

The '* Southern Hist«irical Sfx*iety," under the 
mana^^ement of ex-C'onfederat«'S. has Ik'ou esj>eciHlly 
active in collectin«; and publishing the essays of 
Southern writers on the subject of these military 
prisons. These authors have lal>ored with n patience 
that is heroic, find with sophistry that is hopeles.s, 
to secure an ac(juittnl of those who are chargetl with 
the fearful resj)onsibility for Andersonvillc's appal- 
ling cruelties. 

Pollard, in his "Lost Cause," whi.stles the 
charges i>f systematic cruelties down the wind. 
.TetTers(Mi Davis, in his lHK)k "The Rise and Fall of 
the C'onfetlerate (iovernment." pronounces the dread- 
ful indictment a malignant fiction of the North. He 
boldly justifies the meditated slaughter of twelve 
hundred Union officers by the |>owiler mine under 
Libby Prison in lNt'»l. when the gallant Colonel 
I'lric Dahlgren made his daring but ill-fated attempt 
at their deliverance; and when that intrepid young 
Pennsylvanian fell at iho head of his daring little 
band. JefTerson Davis permitted the ghoulish muti- 
lation and insult to the Inuly t>f Dahlgren almost in 
sight of his own window. The infamy was fittingly 
crowned by burying the dead and dreaded leader in 
a grave concealed from his father an«l mother with 
malignant care until a Union man, Mr. Lohaiau, who 



INTRODUCTION. xi. 

was a witness of the night burial, removed the 
remains to the farm of Mr. Richard Orrick, ten miles 
from Richmond, where they were hidden until the 
Confederacy fell and Davis was a fugitive from the 
Nation's righteous wrath. 

Jefferson Davis selected as his chief agent for 
the torture of Union prisoners the inhuman John H. 
"Winder, whom he describes as a "humane and Chris- 
tian soldier," and Wirz, the Andersonville monster, 
as a typical martyr in a holy cause and a sanctified 
victim of Yankee vengeance. He denounces the 
shocking flood of evidence given in the Wirz trial 
in 1865 by the survivors of Andersonville; the sworn 
testimony of Confederate officers, guards and sur- 
geons, Southern citizens. Catholic priests, Protestant 
ministers; the terrible confirmation of their state- 
ments by a joint committee of Congress; the report 
of the United States Sanitary Commission, and the 
verdict of the most skilled surgeons and physicians 
of the time in our country, as " worthless romances," 
maliciously designed to justify a harsh political con- 
trol of the South, to malign its chosen leaders and 
" fire the Northern heart " against the Southern 
people. 

Scores of ex- Confederates less eminent have, in 
books, newspapers and essays, labored for a genera- 
tion, and are laboring yet with unabated industry to 
disprove the dreadful charges of inhuman cruelty to 
Federal captives. They vainly seek by ingenious 
pleas of poverty to excuse or mitigate the crime of 



xii. ISinuhHTlnS. 

Kuirvin;; aa well as freezing I'nion soldiers to iloath 
at Anilersonville. Salisbury and Belle Isle. These 
efforts not only to ac({uit .JelTers<in Davis of criminal 
res|M)nsibility, hut to exalt him ami his iIih'Us, have 
been boldly aidc'il in speeches by ex-Confederates in 
both httuses of Congress, by orators in |)olitical cam- 
paigns and on the lecture plaff»»rm. 

It is within recent memory that an ex-Confed- 
erate, who occu[)ie(l successively the |K)8itions of 
I'nited States senator, cabinet otlicer. and justice of 
the Supreme Court of the United States, solemnly 
declareil Davis to be a pure patri«>t, destined and de- 
serving to be revered liki' Washington, Lincoln and 
Grant. It is but recently that the '-fallen chief" 
made a triumphal "progress" through the South, and 
almost in sight of tiie fourteen thousand graves of 
the Cnion victims of Andersonville he was haile<l 
with an enthusia.'^m and courted with an adulation 
that resemltled the ''{(rogress" ot Charles the Second 
from Dover t») London at the time of the Restora- 
tion. 

Such, then, are a few of the rea.sons that justify, 
if they do not render imperative, a cjindiil resume of 
the facts in the history of Southern prisons and the 
public n-lation t>f Mr. Davis to them. 

No reasoning person will rxpect that a full and 
comjtrehenHive history f)f those prisons coidd be 
given within the limits of a single e.s.say, nor indeed 
end)raced within the covers of a single volume, for 
Huch a task would comprise the experience of an uu- 



INTRODUCTION. xiii. 

armed army outnumbering the host that Lee led 
against Meade at Gettysburg. 

It will answer the purposes of the present to 
give the more essential and marked features of that 
portion of our Civil War records. 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. PAGE. 

The Exchange Controversy 1 

CHAPTER II. 

Cruelty and Confiscation — Bullets and Bloodhounds 27 

CHAPTER III. 
Evidence Concerning Andersonville 38 

CHAPTER IV. 
Andersonville — More Evidence 47 

CHAPTER V. 
From Official Records and Confederate Archives 81 

CHAPTER VI. 

Federal Prisoners Under Fire of Union Batteries — Cause- 
less Shooting — Colonel Rose's Tunnel 101 

CHAPTER VII. 
Dahlgren's Raid and the Libby Powder-Mine 120 



CnS'TKS'TS. 



fAllB. 

( HAI'IKIC VIII. 



l{r»i.i)iiHibility fi>r ItitiTruptiun of Exchan(f»--('hoicf of 
I'rJHOiu'n* for rrenident — The AMKHHsination- Arrei«t of 
Ji<(r«<rMin Daviit 134 

CHAl'TKK IX. 
\ftiT Oiickniiuiu^a — Genernl (iraut Appears — Battle of 

L«M>kouf .Mounlftiii The .Mnrch t<» thf Sea 15:. 



CHAI'TKK .\. 

K. ^•a^<• of liiioii Prisoners I'nder the Stars and StripeH 

« ►uce .More Home! 171 



CHAI'TKK XI. 
rwfUtj-Qve Yfnr« After "r<!ice on Earth, G«iod Will 

Toward Men " I'.m; 



LLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE. 

"Handed the Offioee in Chaege a Papeb " 14 

"The Commandant's Dog was Killed, and Eaten with 

ZEST " 32 

The " Mansions " of Andebsonville 39 

" Dead Among the Living '' 45 

"He Stepped Aoboss the Dead-Line and Begged to be 

Shot " 61 

A Sample of John Windee's "Kindness" to Union Pkis- 

ONEKS 65 

"The Man Climbing the Teee Repeesents Holm, and I 

AM Repeesented Lying Undee the Teee " 79 

MuBDEB OF Lieutenant Geeson 106 

" Death of Uleic Dahlgeen " 122 

" Shot bt the Guaed at Libbt " 144 

" The Sight of Theib Flag " 178 

"Peace on Eabth, Good Will Towabd Men" 196 



''sergeant CO.,A,427ti, N. Y. S. VOLS. 
-jST LIEUTENANT. 23d U. S. C. T. 

cm O.Tyl2r PGsl lie. 50, 0. A. R. M\ cf CoMecticiii 



Bastiles of the Confederacy 

CHAPTEK I. 

The Exchange Controversy. 

''T^^^UEING the first year of the war no formal 
\y agreement for an exchange of prisoners 
existed, captives being exchanged by mutual 
consent of opposing commanders. But as the opera- 
tions of the armies on both sides extended, the neces- 
sity for a better method became so apparent that, on 
the 22d of July, 1862, a cartel of exchange was 
drawn up and agreed upon by General John A. Dix, 
and General D. H. Hill, representing the respective 
belligerents. By its terms all j)risoners of war were to 
be discharged on parole in ten days after their cap- 
ture, and the prisoners then held and those subse- 
quently taken were to be conveyed to the points 
mutually agreed upon at the expense of the capturing 
party. The surplus prisoners on one side or the other, 
who were not exchanged, were not permitted, by this 
agreement, to go back to service until declared 



2 //.-l.s/7/.A.'.s lit lilt. < i'.sti-.i'Ki: \i ) . 

oxclmn^t'il. The provisiDns of tho instruinont were 
to rfiimin l)iiulin«^ on each party clurin*^ tho war. 

Tlie cardinal idea of tliis contract was that all 
prisoners Khould bo dolivored within t**n days after 
tlifir caj)turf; then if the opjK)sing party had an 
etpial nunilHT of prisoners in their hands, an exchange 
was to be made. Thus the dischar;i^ed or relea.sed 
men were not necessarily exchanged until so declared 
undtT the terms of tho cartel, 

Aikin's landing, on the James River, thirty 
miles from Richmond, and Vicksburg, on the Mis- 
sissippi, were the first j)oints chosen for the delivery 
of prisoners under Hag of truce. CJeneral Lorenzo 
Thomas was the Hrst Federal Commissioner of Kx- 
change. and Judge Robert Ould acted in a like 
capacity for the Confederates. 

F(»r a year after the cartel was agrt-ed u|mmj, 
exchanges progressed with<Mit any serious friction, 
tho excess of captures during that period being some- 
what in favor of the Confedt^rates. But t\\o captures 
made l)y the Union cuiiunaiiders at Gettysburg, 
X'icksburg and Port Hudson in July, 1^<'>M, turned 
the tide and left a large surplus in Union hands. 

N'arious causes of dissatisfaction had been fer- 
menting on both sides for many months, but now 
develiipeil into a more Heri<tus rupture. Charges of 



COLONEL STREIGHTS RAID. 3 

bad faith and violations of the cartel began to be 
passed between the belligerents through the commis- 
sioners. These unfortunate disagreements, after per- 
sistent efforts to adjust them, culminated at last in 
an entire cessation of the exchange, and their essen- 
tial points will be now referred to. 

In the spring of 1863 Colonel A. D. Streight 
with a mounted brigade set forth on an extended 
raid into Northern Alabama, by order of General 
Rosecrans, then in command in Tennessee, This 
force, after doing much damage by destroying 
bridges, railroad tracks and military stores, pene- 
trated as far as Rome, Ga. , where it was overpowered 
and compelled to accept terms of surrender by the 
Confederates under General N. B. Forrest. It 
happened that a number of negroes had followed 
Streight's column from Alabama, and these being 
captured with him were turned over by Forrest to 
the State authorities. Streight and his officers were 
paroled and furnished a copy of the terms of sur- 
render, which stipulated for their exchange "as soon 
as practicable." 

The Richmond authorities, however, refused to 
approve of the terms granted by Forrest, and Colonel 
Ludlow, who was now the Federal commissioner of 
exchange, was informed that Streight and his officers 



4 liASTJLK:* OF THt CU.SyEHHiAiY. 

wore to bo retaruod U) Aluhaina in a)inpliance with 
n rtM{uii»ition mailo by Uovornor Shorter, in order 
that they mi^^ht bo tno<l by the Stiito courts there 
for abductini^ hIuvcs. 

Alxjut this time one hundred Confederate ofticers 
were brou^lit, under Hag of truce, to City Point for 
exchange, but there being no equivalent for them at 
Richmond except Streight and his officers, and the 
release of these being refused for the rejiso us stated, 
the boat returneil with the Confeileratos to Fortress 
Monroe, and Streight and his officers were confined in 
Libby Prison. 

This was, of course, un absurd disphiy of "bun- 
combe" on the part of liovernor Shorter, and a direct 
viohition of the terms of the cartel by the Ilichmond 
authorities. 

For some ditTcrent but iMjuaiiy frivolous reason 
the Confederates refused to release the ofliceis of 
General Milroy's command, who had been taken at 
Wini'hi'ster about the middle of .June, lsr.:j — Davis 
having trn specially directed in a prt)clamation. 

Another violation of the c(irt«'l «>ccurred in the 
following manner: A numb.-r of small Fe«liTal 
parties, foragers, stnigglers. and the like, hail been 
rapturoil at various times and places by small 
" indejR'udent " commands under Mosby, Inilnxleu, 



SLAVES NOT RECOGNIZED AS SOLDIERS. 5 

Ferguson, McNeil, Morgan, and Quantrel, and 
paroled at the places of capture to avoid the trouble 
and expense of conveying them to the points of 
exchange specified in the cartel. This was a violation 
of contract; but nevertheless these "paroles" were 
regularly charged against the Federal authorities, 
who promptly and rightfully ordered the men thus 
improperly released back to duty, 

A still more glaring violation followed when the 
whole force of Pemberton taken by Grant at Vicks- 
burg were at once restored to active service in the 
Confederate army. 

Another flagrant disregard of the cartel and 
infraction of the usages of war was the detention, as 
prisoners, of citizens, army surgeons, and chaplains, 
many of these having been taken in Lee's Penn- 
sylvania campaign. 

By a proclamation of Davis issued after negro 
enlistments had begun at the North, it was ordered 
that runaway slaves who had enlisted in the Federal 
army should not, if captured, be recognized as 
soldiers, but should be returned to their former 
masters through the State authorities. The white 
officers commanding negro troops, when taken, were 
treated with every form of indignity that malice 
could devise, at Libby, Charleston, and other prisons. 



fl li {SULKS Oh THH CnSyKDhHAcy. 

TIh' I'tiloreil soMiisr.s of tlu' «;jillant Coloiii*! Shaw's 
.">lili Massnrluisett'H regiment, taken in the assault 
on Fort Waj^n«T, were hieked up in the Charh'ston 
jail with niurtk-riTs. thieves, ami like malefactors. 
A lar^e number of Federal t>flicers were nt «litTenMit 
times and places, and on the most trivial preti-xts, 
placed in close contin«'m«'iit, subjected to harsh autl 
unusual treatun-nt. and held as hosta«jes for regularly 
convicted Confederate spies in Federal prisons. 

Major Nathan (lotf, of West Vir»^inia, wlio was 
held prisoner at Lihhy for a time, was taken thence 
and closely Cfmfined as a hostage for one Major 
Armsev. a Confederate whose home was in the same 
ci>uiitv as that of (iotT. Some time in 1m'.;{ Artnsey 
returned in citizen's clothes to his native place, and 
at oniT' proceedeil to enlist recruits clamlestinely 
inside the Federal lines for the Confederate army, 
lit' was recognized, apprehended, tried, and con- 
(1< iiHied as a spv. antl in strict accordance with 
niilitarv law was sentenced to l)e liauj^ed. This 
sentence, however, was commut«'d by President 
liincoln to fifteen yenrs^ stditary confinement at Fort 
Dtjiiware. It need scarcely !>»• atldeil that Major 
(iotf. who was then very young, had violated no 
provision whatever of military law, but being of a 
loval family of wealth and high .social standing in the 



EXCLUDED FROM EXCHANGE. 7 

midst of secessionists, was singled out for special ill- 
treatment, in too evident obedience to local enemies 
at liis home. As Secretary of the Navy under Presi- 
dent Hayes, as an honored and able representative in 
Congress since, if not as the present rightful Gov- 
ernor of his State, the name of this gallant soldier 
and gentleman of West Virginia commands to-day a 
National respect. 

Major Harry White, of the 67th Pennsylvania, 
who had been captured at Winchester in June, 18(53, 
was subjected to all conceivable forms of petty perse- 
cution, and his name excluded with malignant care 
from several lists of officers marked for exchange in 
that year, for the acknowledged reason that he had 
been elected a member of the Pennsylvania State 
Senate, which body was then politically a tie, and 
needed his vote to give the " war party " a majority. 
He was removed from Libby Prison and on Christ- 
mas day, 1863, was placed in solitary confinement in 
Salisbury, N. C, where he was held until the fol- 
lowing year, when he fortunately escaped to the 
Federal lines at Knoxville, Tenn. 

At another time General Neal Dow, of Maine, 
was removed from Libby and placed in solitary con- 
finement at Pensacola, Fla. ; but after a time he was 
returned to Eichmond, without ever learning why he 



S H ASTILKS OF TIIK ((jSyEDKHACY . 

hotl been trcateil with this hiK'ciul mark of tli.- (mh- 
federate oflicijils' displeasiiro. 

In the HUinuior of ls»»3 Cfiptnin Honry \V. Saw- 
vor, of tlie iHt Nfw Jersey Cavalry, and Captain John 
Klvnn, of the olst Indiana Infantry, both prisoners 
at Libby, were condemned by hittery to be han«;ed, 
and under circumstances so peculiarly dramatic and 
interestin;; as to call for narration in some detail here. 

One day in the sprinj^ of 1S08 two mounted 
men in the uniform and o(iuipment of Foileral cap- 
tains appeared at a fortified Cnion camp in East 
Tennessee and jiresonteei an order from the War 
Department at Washington commanding them to 
make a careful survey of tlie post and an immedi- 
ate reptirt as to the nwmlx'r and condition of the 
troops present, the character of the earthworks, and 
the general facilities for defense in case of assault 

111 obedience to this order the colonel then in 
citmmand of the post received the messengers cxiur- 
teously and affonletl them ever)' possible facility' for 
the perfwnnance of thoir duty. Having made full 
and rart'ful drafts of tlu» breastworks, and sketcheil 
their surrounding exposures, they (liiie<l with their 
obliging host, who gave them all further verlwl infor- 
mation they sought, thanked him for his courtesy, 
mounted their horses and dej>artod. 



SPIES ARRESTED AND EXECUTED. 9 

It chanced that at this very moment General 
James H. Wilson rode up to the tent, and casually 
glancing at the tvvo officers leaving, and thinking 
vaguely that he recognized in one of them a former 
acquaintance whom he could not place, inquired 
carelessly of the colonel the names of his visitors. 
In answer the War Department's order was handed 
him, and this he proceeded to read with an interest 
that soon increased to suspicion, and, finally con- 
vinced that all was not right, he directed that the 
two men, who had now a good start on their return 
journey, should be overtaken and returned to his 
presence for further inquiry as to their mission and 
identity. 

A small but well-armed squadron was instantly 
mounted, and advancing rapidly by a parallel road, 
the two men were soon intercepted and informed that 
their immediate return to the camp was desired by 
General Wilson, who awaited them. Their protests 
were vigorous, but as they were informed that these 
orders were not debatable, and as a successful resist- 
ance was not possible, they sullenly accompanied their 
escort back to headquarters. The men were sharply 
interrogated by General Wilson; but they calmly 
reiterated their previous statements to the colonel, 
and pointed with cool dignity to the order of the 



10 UAsrii.ns OF thk costEHKiiAcy. 

\\';ir Dopartment in conliriimtion of their Mutli.irity 
nn<l iiU'iitity. 

General Wilson, confronting tin* man wlK)n» lie 
lirst recojj^nizt'd. askt'<l hiia dirj-ctly if h«» was not 
so-aml-so (callin«; liiia by naiiwi. whom hf had 
known at a rt'rtain tini«? prior to tin" war. at West 
l*oint. anil if In* was not now an oflicor of the Con- 
federate army, and iiis companion also. The ofticer 
with emphasis answercil. " No;" whereujM)n (reneral 
Wilson stepped (piickly to his side, and. without cere- 
mony, drew the otVicer's swonl half-way out of the 
scahluird. and l)ehold. upon the blade was the name 
l»\- which the (feneral had ad<lrcssed him. and under 
it the tell-tale initials, "I". S. A." 

Further denial was useless, and was not at- 
temjtted; the men were disarmetl and [)laced under a 
strong; ji^uard. and a fidl and immediate in.juiry 
respectin«( the prisoners and their nllc^^i'd missit»n 
was wired to Washinj^ton. Secretary of War Stan- 
ton promi)tly replied, jjronouncin:,' the purj^orteil 
(trdcr a forgery, and directing' the immediate trial of 
tile men who had presented it. 

.\ court-martial was at once convened. t'onijKised 
of otVicers t)f the post. The e\ id<'nce was clear and 
conclusive, a venlict of i,Miilty was unanimously ren- 
dered, and in conformity with th»' stern military law 



MEASURES FOR RETALIATION. 11 

and usages of war relating to spies, the bold but un- 
lucky adventurers were hanged the next morning. 
Both were men of uncommon intelligence and high 
courage, and when the tragic ending of their mission 
was announced in Richmond, where each had wide 
social and official influence, their execution was 
fiercely denounced as a high-handed Yankee out- 
rage. The Confederate authorities, filled with savage 
resentment, at once decided upon a summary meas- 
ure of retaliation. 

A few days later the commandant at Libby 
Prison summoned into one of the lower rooms of the 
prison all the Federal captives "of the rank of cap- 
tain." Many of the prisoners, fondly hoping that 
this unusual summons betokened their exchange, fell 
into close ranks and were boisterously merry. 

But an ominous silence ensued as they looked 
into the colorless face of the Confederate officer as 
he opened with a nervous hand an official-looking 
document and proceeded to read it in a voice that 
revealed his strong agitation. It was an order from 
his superior. General John H. Winder, commanding 
that, "by direction of the Confederate Secretary 
of War," two Federal captains should be drawn by 
lot from among those now present for immediate 
execution, this measure having been decided upon in 



IJ HASTIl.KS OF THK COSFKDKHACV. 

retaliation forth© "lawless execution"' of twoC'<)llfe<l- 
erate ofticers in Tennessee b_v the Fe<leral commander 
of tliat department. The method of the draw-in^ was 
with grim courtesy left to th»^ captives present who 
were now to take their chances in the lottery of 
death. 

The suppresHiti hut intense emotion causetl by the 
reading of this unlooketl for decree was easily traced 
in the blanclied faces of the bravest there, and the 
depth and dirt'otion of each soldier's thoughts at this 
solemn moment can be left to c<mjecturf; it can be 
witnessed and romembere<l now lik^* many episixU^e 
of prison life, but not describt»d. 

The full name, rank and command of »aili man 
was plainly written on white ballots, cast into a hat, 
and shaken up. There was now a painful hesitjition. 
No one present could Ik? {>ersua<led to j>erform the 
hateful but imj>erative duty of drawing the ballots 
that wore to mark two of their comrades for an 
ignominious and immediate death. But the duty 
must be done, as d.^lay could not be allowed, and at 
last, at the urgent and united request of the 
jiri.soners. an ago<l Tnion chaplain then in Libby 
was induced U^ makt» the drawing. 

The venerable man, with his eyes l)andaged and 
with a silent and fervent prayer on his lijM*, drew 



''WITH HEAVY HEARTS AND SOLEMN FACES:' 13 

forth the first ballot; and the Confederate officer, 
amid the stillness of death, announced the name of 
Captain Henry W. Sawyer as the first victim, and 
the next slip bore the name of Captain John Flynn. 

The doomed men received the announcement of 
their fate with the composure that became brave sol- 
diers. They were taken to a small, dark 'cell in the 
middle cellar, to there await their execution, which 
was to take place within a few days, and the rest of 
the officers were sent back to their former quarters; 
and with heavy hearts and solemn faces, as they 
thought of the tidings that would soon be borne to 
two Northern homes. 

It chanced that on the following day Bishop 
Lynch, of South Carolina, arrived in Kichmond on 
some mission of his office, and among the items of local 
news he read the notice of the impending execution 
of Sawyer and Flynn ; and casually learning that the 
latter was a member of his church, his sad situation, 
and indeed the situation of both the condemned men 
so awakened his benevolent interest, that he resolved 
to exert his influence with Jefferson Davis, with 
whom he was on terms of cordial friendship, in the 
hope of obtaining— if not a commutation of the death - 
sentence — at least a reprieve for ten days longer, to 
afford the men that brief season of preparation for 
death. 



1 1 UASTILKS OF THK COSFKhEHACY. 

Dt'sjtitt' tho g(H)il Bishop's |K)\v»Tful innuoiice 
aiul inorciful inUTfosnion, Davis r«Miiaiiit(l iminov- 
ahle, niul the exi'outioii of th<' two men was fixtv] to 
take |»hice the next ihiy at Camp Lee, near Hich- 
iiioiitl. the usual phico for military executions. Both 
una wrote tcinler messages of farewell to their lovetl 
ones, and at an early hour next morning they left tlu-ir 
cells, and ino>inting horses — the death-sentence having 
l>.'.-n first read to them — tli»*y proceed. 'd. uiid.-r a 
strong mounted guard, towanlthe place of executit»n. 

Few wt>rds were exchanged by the prisoners or 
guards as the solemn procession advanced ; the silence 
among the sober visaged men — guards and |)ris- 
oners — was painful, and already they were m-ar the 
fatal ground when an oflii-er, overtaking them on 
horseback, rodt^ to the head of the esc<irt and handed 
the oflicer in chargf a jia]>er. 

Ordinarily so coimnon and tritlini,' an occur- 
rence as this would scarcely have attract«>d remark, 
but this suddtMi arrival, at a moment when the men's 
nerves were strained to /i high tension, sent a visible 
current of excitement through the ranks, ami 
awakened unutterable inti^rest in the breasts of the 
condemned men. But their hearts beat fast4»r yet, 
and a wild gleam of hope tlirilled them as they saw 
fli"' ■• unmanding ofticor optMi and r.ad the paper with 




n^. 



1^ . C\^ 




'Handed the Officer in charge a paper." — See page 



CHECKMATED BY GENERAL BUTLER. 15 

a visible flush of satisfaction. He saluted and dis- 
missed the messenger with a few inaudible words, 
and giving the command "right about!" the squad- 
ron, without receiving any explanation as to the 
nature of the message, save that which their imagin- 
ation could invent out of the incident just witnessed, 
began a brisk return in the direction of Richmond. 
The news was soon given to Sawyer and Flynn ; the 
joyful tidings moistened their eyes. 

Davis at the last moment had thought it wise to 
yield to the appeal of Bishop Lynch and give the 
men ten days more of life, determined as he was 
upon their final execution. The men were returned 
to their cell in Libby to wait for the good or ill 
fortune that their short respite might bring, and 
neither of them forgot Bishop Lynch in their prayers 
that night. 

The facts were reported to General Butler at 
Fortress Monroe, and were by him swiftly transmitted 
to Washington. The case was discussed in Cabinet 
meeting, and aroused deep indignation at the North. 
Mr. Stanton was authorized to place the matter in 
the hands of General Butler, " with full power," and 
Butler acted with characteristic promptness and 
vigor. He politely notified the Confederate author- 
ities at Richmond, and without argument, that on 



10 BASTILKS OF TUK roSFKHKHACY. 

the snino ilay nnd hour that Captains Sawyer and 
Flyiin shimld l)t« oxocutotl. lio would hfiiig Gfuoral 
\\ . II I'. LiM' and Captain Winder, lK)th of whom 
wore tlien his prisoners at Fortress Monroe. The 
former was a nephew of General K. E. Loe, the lattor 
a son of JetTersou Davis' j)articular friend John H. 
Winder, Commissary General of Federal prisoners. 

The checkmate was superb nnd complete. The 
sacritice of two Confederate officers thus powerfully 
related could not l)e well indul«,'ed in. as the 
sagacious Butler knew with exasperating precision, 
even to gratify the imperious humor of " the Presi- 
dent"; anil thus Sawyer and Flynn were saved in 
the very shadow of the gallows. 

When General Butler was made Commissioner 
of Exchange, the Confederate Commissi«)ner was 
directed not to recognize or communicate with him, 
because Mr. Davis had, with great solemnity, declared 
him an " outlaw " by proclamation, because of the 
GonerQl's rigorous government of New Orleans in 
1S(')2. The Confederates soon saw the folly of this 
step, however, and escaped general ridicule by an 
early and sensible n>treat. dutlge Oidd admitij with 
candor, that of all the Federal representatives with 
whom he cjime in contact in the exchange negotia- 
tions. General Butler was the most truthful and just. 



PROPOSAL FOR GENERAL EXCHANGE. 17 

and gratefully testifies to liis personal courtesy to 
liim and his humane treatment of Confederate 
prisoners. 

During the month of July, 1863, Judge Ould 
submitted a proposal for a general exchange, a 
condition being that the surplus held by either party 
should be released on parole; but as the proposal 
did not suggest a satisfactory remedy for the griev- 
ances that were the main grounds of Federal dissat- 
isfaction, it was rejected, a large excess of prisoners 
being at this time in Union hands. 

Meantime the prisons at Richmond and else- 
where were being rapidly overflowed; the ratio of 
deaths rose to an alarming degree, and sickness and 
suffering increased daily among the unfortunate 
captives, as the full blaze of midsummer beat on 
them with dreadful power. 

Having thus noted the chief causes with which 
the Federal authorities justified their refusal to con- 
tinue the exchange, justice demands that the Confed- 
erate side of the question should be presented in its 
material points. This indeed has been attempted by 
many Southern writers with more zeal and rhetoric 
than accuracy. But Judge Ould, whose position as 
Commissioner of Exchange afforded him more than 
any other an acquaintance with the facts on the 



IS niSTlLKS OF THK CuSFKhKUACY. 

C'onfoilerat*' Biil»3 of the cilso, hns preseiiU'il it in an 
in^'onious lunl attractive narrativo puhlislietl Bonn- 
years since in the Philadcljihui IfrrA/// Tliiirs. In 
this he direc-ts attention to (imeral Orders Nos. o'.i 
and 100, issued l>y tlie Federal War Department in 
1S«)3, which provided that "no paroles unaccom- 
panied In actual |xys8ession and delivery at tlie |K>ints 
designati'<l in the cartel would he reco«;nized," but 
declared furtluT that " if a parole should bo given 
und»'r ditTerent circumstances, and the I'nited States 
did not aj»prove of the same, the paroh d ofi'iciT mu-t 
return into cajttivity." 

lie also refers to General Order No. 'JuT, is?.ued 
at Washington July 3d, ls«;:{, which declared that 
•' all captures must bo reduced to actuid [)ossession. 
and all {>risoners of war must b3 delivered nt the 
plaee designated, there to be exchanged, or paroled 
untd exchange can ])e effected." This general order 
did not contain the provision of the others, that the 
parohnl oflicer, if ho gave an unauthorized part)le. 
shoultl ''return into captivity." 

'The application of these general onlers to the 
facts connect«'il with exchange.s," Judge Ould says, 
"prmluced the first serious dilRculty." He atimits 
that tlie jH)sition assumed in these general orders 
"may have boon strongly 8U{)[K^rteil by the language 



CLAIMS OF JUDGE OULD. 19 

of the cartel," which required " all prisoners of war 
to be discharged on parole in ten days after capture, 
and the prisoners now held, and those hereafter taken, 
to be transported to the points mutually agreed upon 
at the expense of the capturing party;" but claims 
that the praciice up to May, 1863, had been for both 
parties to recognize paroles given at the time and 
place of capture. He contended that the cartel 
touched only — so far as deliveries were concerned 
— such prisoners as were in captivity, or held by 
either party in depots or military prisons, and had 
been removed from the battlefield or place of capture 
and reduced into actual possession, and that it still left 
the force and effect of military paroles to be inter- 
preted by the usages of war; that there often arose 
contingencies in which a prisoner might give a valid 
parole without violating the manifest purpose or 
language of the cartel; and instances a parole given 
Colonel Leroy Stone, of the 149th Pennsylvania 
Volunteers, captured at Gettysburg, who, being 
wounded, and unaware of the existence of the gen- 
eral order (207) issued on the day of his capture, 
accepted the parole to avoid a painful journey to the 
rear. 

The existence of this general order was unknown, 
in fact, to the most of the army ; or at least was un- 



20 liASriLKS OF THE COSFKDEltACY. 

known to tho subonlinalo Confederate commnndere 
at tlio tinjo; for the writ<'r, wlio Mas woumli-d and 
captured at Gettvsburj^, in tho second day's action, 
was present with a column «)f captured Federal ofti- 
cers at rairfield Clap, on tho 5th of July, when a 
parole of these prisoners was already in progress, 
when an order countermanding it was received by 
Major Fairfax, of Longstreet's staff. 

Lee's wagon train, seventeen miles lon«j, en- 
cumbered tho roads, and the care of several th«)usanil 
prisoners greatly increased the difllculty oi his retreat 
across the Blue Riilge to the Potomac; a fierce rain 
storm hud set in on tho 4th, and continuing all night 
had made tho mountain roads alm(»st impassable. 
Hiigerstown and Williams|Kjrt seemed floating in 
lakes of mud. 

Tho IVdoral authorities insisted that tho pro- 
visions of tho latest General Order (-**T) should bt> 
retroactive, and hence that paroles given at the time 
and placoof capture shiniKl. notwithstanding pre^^ous 
practice, bo inoperative. It was claimed by the Con- 
federates that tho execution of this order unfairly 
depriv(>d tlioin of tho advantage of many captures 
Uiude by th>iii during tho preceding f(»ur months, 
anil, therefore, they refused assent to this arrange- 
m«nt, but proposed, instead, that previous practic 



COLORED FEDERAL SOLDIERS. 21 

should be operative up to the date of the order's 
issue. 

Finding that the Federal commissioner was 
immovable respecting the class of paroles men- 
tioned, Judge Oald informed the Federal commis- 
sioner that he need not send any more Confederate 
officers to City Point with the expectation of receiv- 
ing as equivalents only those who were in captivity, 
/. e., those officers of Streight's and Milroy's com- 
mands then in Libby, and the officers taken at Get- 
tysburg, and closed his letter in these words: "If 
captivity, privation and misery are to be the fate of 
officers on both sides hereafter, let God judge between 
us. I have struggled in this matter as if it had been 
a matter of life and death with me. I am heartsick 
at the termination, but I have no self-reproaches." 

"The inevitable effect of the new rvile," says 
Judge Ould, "would be to confine exchanges to the 
officers and men who were in captivity, leaving the 
surplus in prison, and would, therefore, have directly 
ignored the terms of the cartel." 

Touching colored Federal soldiers, he elsewhere 
makes the remarkable observation that no officer of 
the Federal army during the progress of the war 
was ever punished in any way for commanding or 
leading negro troops, though the Confederates had 



•J'J liASTll.ES OF THE COSFEUEKACY 

many sucli in captivity. For a mnn occiijtyin^ the 
|>«)Hitii)n lie iliil at tlio tinio, tluH denial tlls|»lays n 
lai-k of iiifonuation tiiat isHtartlin^'. t«» us»' no harslK-r 
term; for the fact that this clasH of Federal ofticerH 
was ningle*! out ami siKM-ially ill-treated in n«'arly all 
the Soutliern prisons is ho well known to huiulretls 
of Hurvivin<^ witnesses. North ami South, tliat it seems 
like altsunlity to cite instances. The writer will, 
however, venture to present one instance whiclj 
occurreil \Hiile he wa.s continetl at Lil>by Pri.son 
with over a thousand I'nion officers in 1^»»;V 4. 
At that tiiMf no prisoners were drtained th»'re save 
commissioned officers, except (x-casionally for a sinj^le 
ni^lit whilt* in transit to other jirisons where enlisted 
men were held. 

A small apartment about twelve feet s<[uare was 
3pecially constructed at the north »'nd of the kitchen, 
and hero several white otliciM-s were locked in with a 
number of ne;^ro privates who had been captured 
under their command. A thousand officers had daily 
access to this *'kitt'hen,"' and from it /ill could see 
thrt)U^h cracks the inmates of the small apartment, 
init wen- forbidden by Turner, the prison command- 
ant, to talk with them. 

I'erhaps .Iud«,'e Ould does not rate thir. a "pun- 
ishment." And does he invite us to believe, then. 



LEGISLATION "IN TERROREM:' 23 

that the Confederates went to the trouble and ex- 
pense of building this apartment and placing special 
sentinels at the door in order to give greater seclu- 
sion and comfort to this class of prisoners than to 
their brother officers? 

Again he says that "the Confederate law which 
authorized the delivery of negro soldiers to the State 
authorities was never enforced, but was to be re- 
garded at the time as legislation 'm ferr^orem,'' and 
hence did not present any 'practical difficulty.'" 
Would he also ask us to believe that it would not 
have been enforced, like the sentence of Sawyer and 
Flynn, if the Federal authorities had not had tbe 
means at hand to frustrate it by Butler's vigorous 
remedy ? 

He relates a three days' visit to Fortress Mon- 
roe, where he and General Butler agreed upon a 
practical return to and compliance with the main 
provisions of the cartel of 1862, and proposed to 
"flank" the single point of disagreement relating to 
the captured negro slaves who had fled from their 
masters and enlisted in the Federal army by leaving 
the future adjustment of such cases to such measures 
of retaliation as might be found practicable and ex- 
pedient, and declared that he had now the authority 
and desire to sign the new agreement in that shape. 



24 n.xsTii.Ks (ty rin: cosfkI'KHacy. 

Gi'IuthI liutliT, ho\vi«vi<r. rofuseil to sigu until the 
pro|)«.sfil slioiild Ik? suhinitttHl to his Governin««nt for 
nppr.ival; Mu\ hs this was not obtainoil. tht? demUock 
continut'd, uml Judge Ouhl returned to his lines. 

Croneral Grant, to whom the Government n year 
afterwards referred the matter, refused to assent to a 
general exehango under existing circumstances, and 
in a letter to General Butler, said: " If we Ix^gin a 
system of exchange now that liberates all prisoners, 
we shall have to tight on until the wlu>le South is 
exterminated. Whereas, if we hold <>ii to th<»se n<»w 
in our hands, they count for no more than dead men. 
It is hard on »Mir soldiers to keep them in Southern 
prisons, hut it is mercy to tho.^e left in the tield to 
tight uur battles." 

It would be tedious and unprofitable to recapitu- 
late the details of the exchange controversy that 
followed the events above narrated during the blazing 
summer and unusually severe winter that onsui'd. 
Enough to say that new grievances were vigilantly 
hunted and found on botii sides, and the prisoners 
wild li<)j)-«s of libt'ration <lied in their despairing 
souls. .Utout .me hundr.'d thousand prisoners wore, 
at the dato of General Grant's letter, held on both 
sides, a groat majority of these being in Eeileral 
hands. 



'•ROBBED THE CRADLE AND THE GRAVE." 25 

When it is borne in mind that Lee's army was 
at this time struggling for the life of the Confed- 
eracy in the Petersburg trenches, and that Grant was 
daily tightening his grasp upon it, and that Hood 
was striving with a disheartened and already de- 
feated army to check the victorious advance of Sher- 
man before Atlanta; and when it is remembered that 
the Confederate prisoners at the North were well 
sheltered, fed, and fit for immediate service with 
Lee's and Hood's depleted forces, to strengthen 
which the Confederacy had already " robbed the 
cradle and the grave '* ; and when it is finally borne in 
memory that at this critical time not one in fifty of the 
emaciated Union captives at Andersonville, Macon, 
Salisbury and Richmond could more than barely stand 
upon their feet — much less march and fight for many 
months, if indeed ever afterwards — the earnest, 
almost pathetic appeals of the Confederate authori- 
ties for an exchange on almost any terms will not 
excite surprise, nor will the decision of General 
Grant, deeply as it is known to have Avrung his gen- 
erous heart to leave for a time the unfortunate Union 
prisoners to the mercy of merciless keepers like 
Winder, Wirz and the Turners, lessen the country's 
confidence in his sagacity nor dim the lustre of his 
patriotism and fame. 



•^r, UASI ll.f.S lit JHh((>.Stt.l>Kl:A<i. 

While tlnTf w»»ro othor minor cnuBGB of disa- 
«,'r»'t»nu'iit l»'HiileH tlioKo emiinerate«l. it Ih believe<l 
tliiit tlu' forotjoini^ statement omhracoH the eBBential 
causes tliat n'sulted in tho cessation of exchanges in 
the miilsumnier of 1^»»;?. and in this form it is sul>- 
mittod ft)r impartial jud'^'nifnt. 

However honest minds n)ay divide on the merits 
of th»» unhappy disjmt*', they must unite iu the 
acknowletlgment that the j)risoners themselves were 
the victims and not the authors of the (juarrel that 
proved the forerunner of the most gigantic and 
liideous crime that ever stained the annals of 
( Miristemlom. 



CHAPTEK II. 

Cruelty and Confiscation — Bullets and 
Bloodhounds. 

FROM the time of this deplorable disagree- 
ment in regard to exchanges, in the summer 
of 1863, until a month prior to the surrender 
of Lee, the military prisons at Andersonville, Salis- 
bury, Belle Isle and Florence were the scenes of 
torment, cruelty and death in such forms and 
excess as to defy a portrayal by the historian's 
pen or the painter's brush. It is not an exaggera- 
tion to say that the Andersonville stockade, swarm- 
ing at one time in 1864 with thirty-five thousand 
Federal prisoners, witnessed cruelties and sufferings 
that transcended in studied and systematic barbarity 
the devilish inventions of the Spanish Inquisition, 
the terrors of the French Revolution, and all the 
dread tempests of war that have swept over Europe 
since the Crusades. 

At Belle Isle, in the James river opposite Rich- 
mond, the situation of the captives was pitiful during 



2.S HASTII.KS UF JUL COSFEhEliAt'Y. 

tlio wint«*r «)f l^fi:}-4, wliirli was the most rigorous 
known in tlmt latitmh' ft)r many years, freezing the 
James st) soli<llv that teams with lieavy lojuls crossed 
easily on the ice to ami from the Richmond shore. 
Th»' an-a of the Island was al)out one hundred acres, 
and tlic prisoners, varying from on*' to t«'n thousand 
in nundier. were hemnuMl in hy guarils<m its bleakest 
jiart, most of tht-m without slndter. and hut a few 
found partial shelter in ragged tents. Eight men 
froze to death in the ditch that skirted one side of 
the camp. They had crawled into it U) escaj.e the 
cruel blasts of a winter night. One hundred and 
twenty-three perished from ct)ld there that winter. 

In this, as well as in all the other prisons, all 
money and articles of intrinsic value, and even sui-h 
articles of clothing as their captors fancied, were 
taken from them, the Conft-derate ollicials having in 
their hands at one time fifty-tive thousand dollars 
belongim,' to the starving ami freezing men on Ueile 
Isle. 

r.\ an arrangement be'twetMi the Exchange 
C'ommission«'rs, an amount of blankets and clothing 
was sent them bv the V. S. Sanitary and Christian 
Ct>mmissions through the (lovernment. but hundreds 
had perished from exposure before this r»'lief reacheil 
them. 



''MADE half-insane:' 29 

The food dealt out to them — chiefly corameal 
from which the husk had not been removed — was so 
scant in quantity and wretched in quality, that the 
whole croAvd of ragged and shivering wretches were 
made half insane by the ceaseless pangs of hunger 
and the varied diseases to which it led. The dog 
belonging to the Confederate commandant straying 
into the camp one day was killed and eaten with 
eager zest. Because the wagons bearing their daily 
supply of rations met with an accident on one 
occasion, the prisoners were deprived of their food 
that day, nor was the loss ever replaced. While 
these scenes were passing daily at Belle Isle, the 
Confederate capitol where the Southern Congress 
met, and the house of JefPerson Davis were within 
sight of the Union sufferers. 

Boxes sent to the Union officers confined in 
Libby Prison that winter by friends at the North 
were brought from the flag of truce boat at City 
Point and stored, thousands in number and for 
months, in Kerr's warehouse, in full sight and within 
fifty feet of Libby Prison, from whose east windows 
the famishing owners could plainly read their names 
on the covers. These boxes contained both food and 
clothing, books and such God-sends as the love of 
wives, sisters and parents could thoughtfully suggest 



Hi) hasiilks oy tiik C'j\yhi>K/{ \ry 

aiitl tlieir purso Hupply. The (.'oufederatt' iigmt imd 
rcceive<l tlu'iu inuItT a t\n^^ o{ truce, aud by the 
a^'neinrnt hml pledged the honor of himself aiul bis 
governiiieiit to their inviolate and prompt delivery ; 
yet the shameful truth must bo rei-orded, that but a 
j)ortitni of those boxes ever reached the hamls of the 
owners, and most of these were plumlered ])efore 
deliviTV of thi'ir most valuable articles, lx»th footl 
and ilothin^. Tiit> rest of the stored \K>\e& were 
leisun-ly apj>ropriated by the Confederate officials 
and soldiers, who had fn-e access to them day and 
ni^'ht. 

A box sent from liome to the writer in January, 
Isr, 1, was robbed of its entire contents, and to refine 
tiie tlieft a written list was left in the bottom to 
remind him of the treasures ho had missed. In 
order to get the empty box for a seat — a luxury in 
Lii)l>y — he was laughingly told by •• Dick" Turner 
that he "must sign for it;" he iliil so. to save liis 
keepers tliat trouble, and the following day Turner 
sent a {\\e of guards up stairs (iitd look (iirni/ thrho.r. 

On the entrance of the writer to the prison from 
Gettysburg, where his (»ye was destroyed by a wound, 
he was brutally struck in tiie face, which was still 
bandaged ajid inflamed. l)y this same Turner, wh«). 
having pilbied his |KKket«of everything else, struck 



''ON THE VERGE OF STARVATIONS 31 

this brave blow as a reply to the writer's request to be 
permitted to retain a small fragment of shell which 
had wounded one of his comrades at Gettysburg. 

A parting testimony of his regard was paid in 
February, 18(34, when he locked him up among the 
rats in an underground cell, without covering or light, 
for his participation in the famous tunnel escape, it 
being his ill-fortune to be re-captured after getting 
thirteen miles from Richmond. 

Another box sent to him from home in 1864 
was found still in storage with thousands of others 
in Eichmond when the Union army entered the city, 
and was expressed to him in New York by General 
Mumford, in August, 1SG5, twenty-one months after 
the Confederates had received it. It would have 
indeed been joyfully welcomed, with its edibles, 
clothing and shoes, for while it was withheld from 
him he was on the verge of starvation and was 
shivering in the filthy tatters of a summer uniform, 
and with frozen, swollen and shoeless feet, in an un- 
sheltered, open field, with twelve hundred famishing 
Union officers at Camp Sorghum, near Columbia. 

This shameful breach of faith and inhuman 

deprivation prevailed in all the chief prisons at 

the South, with a few honorable exceptions, and 

was a piece of the general "system" that had been 
.3 



32 liASriLfSS OF TliK CtjSFKht. /. . i ( ) . 

ilfliberntt'ly ilt'ciiknl ujKjn at Kicliiuoml in th<- inai- 
meiit of prisoners, and witli the desperate and despic- 
able pur|>ose of ])ringing tlie Federal authorities t<» 
terms, ami meanwhile insidiously disal)K' the army of 
captives in their hamls for future service in the field, 
should any |H)rtiou of it survive th«< infam<jus ojK?r- 
ation of the '"system." 

The two prisons, Camp Sorghum and Camp 
Asylum, at Columbia, S. C, where the lYxleral 
oflicers were confined during the winter of ls»>4-5, 
were scenes of shameful cruelties, the captives suf- 
fering dreadfull\ from the beggarly allowance of 
shelter, fuel and foo<l. Near Camp Sorghum a citi- 
zen was employeil by the keepers to track, with blood- 
hounds, prisoners wlio had escaped, and several men 
were dnadfully injured by them. One officer was so 
badly torn by these savage beasts that ho S(K)n died. 
Two of the dogs strolled into the camp one day ami 
were killed while their owner was in the commandant's 
tent arranging for another chase of FiMleral fugitives. 
The infuriated owntu' was allowed the revenge of 
ca.sting the carcasses of the beasts into the stream 
outside the guard lim* by the sympathizing com- 
nmndiint. This was tlir only water accessible to the 
pri.s«»ners. 








4 -X yp. - 






^ 









^S3^-' 



o^,. 



See page 32 



THREE OFFICERS KILLED 33 

A group of officers were one night singing the 
"Star Spangled Banner" in the centre of the camp, 
when a sentinel deliberately fired into them and killed 
an officer. 

During a roll-call one day a guard who was to 
be on duty that night proposed to a Khode Island 
captain that for a consideration of fifty dollars in 
greenbacks and his watch he would allow him to 
approach his beat at a given signal, about eleven 
o'clock, and, after handing him these valuables, he 
would be permitted to escape unmolested. At the 
hour designated the officer, in answer to the prom- 
ised signal, advanced and handed the demanded price 
of his liberty to his tempter, who pocketed his wages 
and shot the giver dead. For this achievement the 
warrior was allowed to keep his spoils, and was fur- 
loughed and promoted. 

Another guard on the same post, envious of his 
comrade's laurels, shot and killed Lieutenant Turbain, 
of the 66th New York, within a few yards of where 
the writer was standing, and for no other shadow of 
reason than that the Lieutenant had, in passing 
around his tiny hut in broad daylight, approached 
within half a dozen feet of the "dead line," and 
more than fifty feet from his assassin. The promis- 
cuous firing of shots through the camp was at night 



34 liASriLKS OF TIIK COSFKUEltACY. 

a common ami mirth-provoking pastime of the sen- 
tiui'ls around this i>€n of misery. 

The prison at Salisbury, N. C, runkt'd well up 
with the doHilly pen at Andersonville in the variety 
and excess of its horrors, as well as in the number of 
its victims, the nund)er of deaths there being twelve 
thousand, one hundred and twelve. The [)rison was 
a brick factory four stories high, 4().\l()0 feet, with 
live l)uildings formerly used as boarding-houses. A 
board fence surrounding these inclosed about five 
acres, and hero in November, ls»»4, ten thousand 
prisoners were crowded. The buildings were soon 
fillotl with the sick and dying, and within a short 
time more than half of them perished. 

Driven by their sutTerings to desperation, the 
prisoners in November attempted an organized escape 
by forcing the guard, but a regiment hap|)euing at 
the mounMit to arrive by a train, the unarmed and 
emaciated men were soon over{>owered, the artillery 
oj toning on them with grape and canister, and con- 
tinuing to fire for some time after the captives had 
surrendered, while nuiny poor tottering wretches 
who could take no hand in the broak-out were beg- 
ging for mercy. 

In the following month General Winder urgently 
pressed the Kichinond authorities to remove the pris- 



" OPEN FIRE ON THE STOCKADE:' 35 

oners from Salisbury and Florence to a place of 
greater security. It may be said with truth and 
without levity that he was not wholly forgetful of 
himself, for at this period the ominous reports that 
were daily reaching him of Sherman's advance did 
not increase his hours of sleep nor give his dreams 
of capture by that hard hitter a very rosy tint; and 
particularly as he remembered now a certain order of 
his own issued at Andersonville when Sherman had 
taken Atlanta, and in which order he had commanded 
that when Sherman's troops should " approach within 
seven miles of this post [Andersonville] the battery 
of Florida artillery on duty will open fire on the 
stockade [prison] without further orders from these 
headquarters." 

Throughout the entire winter the captives suf- 
fered intensely from cold at this prison, and at Flor- 
ence the same deplorable conditions prevailed. The 
allowance of fuel, of which there was a great abund- 
ance close by, was not half sufficient to cook the 
scant daily rations of coarse meal supplied the men, 
much less to keep up fires to warm their skeleton 
and half-naked bodies, and they sank rapidly and 
died in thousands, as the cold winter blasts swept 
pitilessly over them. 



3fJ liASriLES OF THE COSFEDLIiACY. 

The pnthetic niul daily nppenls of the Bufferers 
to John H. (lOO, the kc'e}>or, to allow them to chop and 
hnul wotxl for themselves under n gunrd, wns met by 
that unconscionable apology for a soldier witii curses 
and the vilest abuse. 

Captain Hall, Confederate Insj)ector, made a 
rejxirt at the time when this iniquity was at its 
height at Salisbury, slating that fifty unused horses 
were standing in the Quartermaster's department 
stables, with plenty of good timber adjacent to the 
prison, and also an abundance of straw for which 
there was no use. 

It is quite needless to say that this was but one of 
the many forms of atrocious cruelty practiced in this 
counterfeit of Hailes under the authority and imme- 
diate supervision of John H. Winder, whose head- 
quarters were as near by as the deadly otlors of the 
pen and his personal safety would p»>rmit him to 
venture. 

The reader will bo glad to be spared the harrow- 
ing and almost incredible details of individual suf- 
fering iiitlictt'd uii"ii till' rnion cajitives at this fear- 
ful jjrison; but the references nmde are truths that 
will carry conviction to every enlightened and unjire- 
judiced mind as to the undoubted and unholy exist- 
ence of the "svstom" that had been hatched at 



''REVOLTING TO HUMANITY:' 37 

Richmond in the treatment of Federal prisoners, a 
plan — revolting and shameful as it was to the com- 
monest instincts of humanity — that was as deliber- 
ately studied and approved beforehand as was any 
campaign of the Civil War. 



( iiArri.i; in 

I'.\ idciicc Ci)iucr}nii,ii Amlcr.suiivillc. 

C^ ( >.MI-; <if the leailiii^ facts, and a necessary few 
rYj of the illustrativt« incidents in the liistory of 
Amlersonville Prison will now be reviewed 
as briefly as an intelligent conception of the place, 
its creators and keepers may rt-qnire, and the means 
and ability of the writer permit. The facts here 
submitted are establishetl by evidence adduced at the 
trial of Captain Iltury Wir/. at Washington, in l^*''), 
from ollicial records at Washington and Confederate 
archives. 

The stockade at Andersonville was located in 
December, lst')3, by W. S. Winder, .son of General 
John II. Winder, the agent <»f the Confederate Gov- 
• ■rnment, upon a narrow stream, not more than six 
feet wide, which had its rise in a 8A\amp. Its banks 
were marshy ami swampy. Tlie water was of n dark 
color, and when allowed to staml for a short time 
would dejMisit in the bottom of the glass n thick, 
loathsome sediment. Such was the condition of tiie 
stream at tho time the location of the stockndo was 
decided upon; its condition after it became the sink 
for the use of the camp will bo described elsewhere. 










The "Mansions" of Andersonville. 



"NATURALLY UNFIT FOR USE.'' 39 

Within half a mile of the stockade ran Little Sweet 
Water creek, a stream varying from fifteen to twenty- 
five feet in width. The water in this creek was clear 
and good, and the land on either side much better 
adapted for a prison camp than the spot on which it 
was located. 

Major-General J. H. Wilson says of this stream: 
" The stream here called Little Sweet Water, about 
fifteen feet in width and five feet deep, runs only about 
two hundred and fifty feet from the corner of the 
hospital inclosure. If the main inclosure had been 
enlarged simply so as to cross that creek, which 
could have been done very easily, it would have 
supplied all the troops that could have possibly been 
put there, with ample water both for culinary pur- 
poses and for the purposes of police. 

******** 
"The water of the stream which ran through 
the stockade, natiirally unfit for use, was rendered 
still worse by being made the sewer to carry away 
the impurities and filth of the prison cook-house, 
which was located on its banks just above the 
stockade, the grease and refuse from which covered 
the stream and floated sluggishly into the limits of 
the prison. The rebel guards were also encamped 
on the stream above the cook-house and emptied 



K) BASTILKS OF THE CONFEHKUACY. 

their filth into it. Can tho miiul conceive n grrater 
mockery than this pretense of furnishin<jf wat«*r for 
the prisoners to drink, which, even when used to 
bathe winmds, often produced •^an'^rene? " 

The prison space was surrounded l>y a high 
wall, from wiiich the sentinels liad a full view of the 
captiv«'S within, ami the "ilead line,"' marked by 
rows of stakes witli narrow strips nailed to their tops. 
foUoweil tiie wall about fifteen feet from its interior 
side. When the stockade swarmed with thirty-five 
thousand men in the summer of 1^04, the space for 
each pri.soner was ascertained l)y actual measurement 
to be six aqudrc feet. Artillery bore upon the stockade 
on throe sides from without, and when Winder pre- 
purt'd it for the [irisoners he had every tree within 
cut down. 

To atTord an idea oi the place and the condition 
of tiie prisoners, the following extracts are offered 
from tiie rejK)rt of Joseph M. Jones, M.D., Profes.'^or 
of Medical Chemistry in the Medical College of 
Georgia, at Augusta, who made a thorough inspec- 
tion of Andorsonville pri.son, under instructions from 
the Surgeon-Cienoral of tlin s. ..rallid C.nf.-.l.raf.' 
States. lie says: 

" Scurvy. iliarrhoMi. dysentery and hospital gangrene 
wcff tlx' |irovailiiit,' diseases. From the crowdt'd condition. 



''FRIGHTFUL ULCERATION AND GANGRENED 41 

bad diet and dejected, depressed spirits and condition of 
the men, their systems had become so disordered that the 
smallest abrasion of the skin from the rubbing of a shoe, 
or from the effects of the sun, or from the prick of a 
splinter, or from scratching, or from a mosquito bite, in 
some cases took on frightful ulceration and gangrene. 
The long use of salt meat, oftentimes imperfectly cured, 
as well as the almost total deprivation of vegetables and 
fruit, appeared to be the chief causes of the scurvy. I 
carefully examined the bakery and the bread furnished 
the prisoners, and found that they were supplied almost 
entirely with corn-bread from which the husk had not 
been separated. This husk acted as an irritant to the 
alimentary canal without adding any nutriment to the 
bread. As far as my examination extended, no fault 
could be found with the mode in which the bread was 
baked; the difficulty lay in the failure to separate the 
husk from the cornmeal. 

*' I strongly urged the preparation of large quanti- 
ties of soup made from the cow and calves heads with 
the brains and tongues, to which a liberal supply of 
sweet potatoes and vegetables might have been advan- 
tageously added. The materials existed in abundance 
for the preparation of such soup in large quantities with 
but little additional expense. Such aliment would have 
been not only highly nutritious, but it would also have 
acted as an efficient remedial agent for the removal of 
the scorbutic condition. 

" The sick within the stockade lay under several 
long sheds which were originally built for barracks. 
These sheds covered two floors, which were open on all 
sides. The sick lay upon the bare boards, or upon such 



\'_> BASriLKH OF THK L'OSFKhKHACY. 

ragf^od hlaiikeU* as they possossotl, without any hotlJing 
so far as I obsiTVotl, or evj«n straw. 

"I oV)st'rv«'cl a largo pile of conibroad, bones and 
tilth of all kiiuls, thirty fi>ot in diainctor and several ffi-t 
in hfight, swarminij with myriads of Hies, in a vacant 
space near the pots usetl for cooking. Millions of flies 
swarmed over everything and covered the faces of the 
sleeping patients, and crawled down their open mouths 
and deposited their maggots in the gangrenous wounds 
of the living and in the mouths of tho deati Mostjuitoes 
in great numbers also infestetl the tents, and many of 
the patients were so stung by these pestiferous insects 
that they resembled those suflFering with a slight attack 
of measles. 

"Tho flies swarming over the wounds an*! over 
tilth of every kind, the filthy, imi)erft>ctly washed and 
scanty sup[)ly of rags, and the limit«'d supply of washing 
utensils, tho same washbowl serving for scores of 
patients, were sources of such constant circulation of the 
gangrenous matter that the disease might rapidly spread 
from a single gangrenous wound. 

''Finally, this gigantic mass of human miserv' calls 
loudly for relief, not only for tho sako of suffering 
humanity, but also on account of our own bravo soldiers 
r»ow captives in the hands of the Federal Government. 
Strict justice to the gallant men of the Confetlerate 
armies who have been or may bo so unfortunate as to bo 
compelled to surrender in battle demands that the Con- 
federate government should adopt that course which will 
best secure their health and comfort in captivity; or at 
least leave thtMr enenjies without a shadow of an excu.'^e 
for any violation of the rules of civilized warfare in tho 
treatment of jirisoners." 



''SHOCK'bD AT THE APPEARANCES 43 

John C. Bates, acting Assistant Surgeon under 
the Confederate authorities at Andersonville, testified 
as follows on the trial of Wirz : 

" I reported to Dr. Stevenson, who assigned me to 
the third division of the military prison under Dr. Shep- 
pard; I was assigned to the fifteenth ward as then 
designated. 

"Upon going to the hospital I went immediately to 
the ward to which I was assigned, and although I am 
not an over sensitive man, I must confess I was rather 
shocked at the appearance of things. The men were 
lying partially nude, and dying and lousy, a portion of 
them in the sand and others upon boards which had been 
stuck up on little props, pretty well crowded together, a 
majority of them in small tents that were badly worn. 

"I got to learn practically the meaning of the term 
'lousy;' I would generally find some upon myself after 
retiring to my quarters; they were so numerous that it 
was impossible for a surgeon to enter the hospital with- 
out having some upon him when he came out. If he 
touched anybody or anything save the ground, and very 
often if he stood still merely any length of time, he 
would get them upon him. 

********* 

"As a general thing the patients were destitute; 
they were filthy and partly naked; there seemed to be 
a disposition only to get something to eat. The clamor 
all the while was for something to eat. They asked me 
for orders for this, that, and the other — peas, or rice, or 
salt, or beef tea, or a potato, or a biscuit, or a piece of 
corn-bread, or siftings, or meal. 

* ** * * * * * 



14 liASriLKS Of THE CUSFEDKHACY. 

"Thoro was in my ward a l>oy of fiftoeu or sixtoeD 
yoars iu whom I f«'lt a particular iiit«'n«-^t My attention 
was more iinme<JiaU«ly callwl to him from hiH youth, ami 
he aj>i»««al«>tl to mo iu such a way that I couhl not well 
avoiil ho(Hlin<j him. Ho would often a.sk mo to brin^ him 
a pifco of broad, a potato, a biscuit, or somothiuj^ of that 
kind, which I did; I would put thom in my i>»>ckot and 
give thom to him. I would 8omotimo.s give him a raw 
potato, and as ho had tho scurvy, and also gangrene, I 
would adviso him not to cook the potato at all but to oat 
it raw, as an ant i scorbutic. I supplied liim in that way 
for some time, but I could not give him a suflicioncy. 
He became btnlriddeu np«,)n tho hips and back, Iving 
«I>on the ground; we afterwards got him some straw. 
Those bedridden sores had become gangrenous. Hf 
became more and more emaciated — until ho di»Ml. 
Tho lice, tho want of b»'d and bedding, of fuel and 
food, wore tho causes of his d«'ath. 

"I was a little .shy. I did not know that I was 
allowod to take Buch things to tho patients, and I h!i<l 
boon so often arrested that I thought it necessary to bf 
a little shy in what I did and koi'p it to mys»'lf. I wouM 
put a ]>otato in my ]>ockot and turn around and let it drop 
to this man or that. I did not wish to be observtHl by 
anyl>ody. When I first wont there I unden^tood that it 
was positively against tho orders to take anything In. 

"I can spoak of other cases among tho patients. Two 
or three others in my ward were in the same condition, 
and there wore others who came to their deaths from thf 
bad condition of things and tho lack of noce.s.sary fiup 
jilios. That is my ])rofessi()nal opinion. 

''In visiting the wards in tho morning I would lincl 
persons lying doiid ; ami sometimes Would lind them 



''DEAD AMONG THE LIVING." 45 

lying among the living. I recollect on one occasion 
telling my steward to go and wake up a certain one, and 
when I went to wake him up myself he was taking his 
everlasting sleep. Upon several occasions, upon going 
into my own wards I found men whom we did not expect 
to die, dead from the sensation of chilblains produced 
during the night, 

"This was in the hospital. I was not so well 
acquainted with how it was in the stockade. I judge 
from what I saw that numbers suffered in the same way 
there. The effect of scurvy as it developed itself upon 
the systems of the men there was the next thing to 
rottenness. 

" The miasmatic effluvia emanating from the hospital 
was very potent and offensive indeed. If I had a scratch 
on my hand — if the skin was broken or abraded in the 
least — I did not venture to go into the hospital without 
protecting it with adhesive plaster. I saw several sores 
originating from the infection of the gangrenous effluvia 
saturating the atmosphere. I thought when I was in the 
stockade that the effluvia was worse there than in the 
hospital. In the stockade the men were more thickly- 
huddled together like ants or bees or something of that 
kind. It was a hard matter to get through them. We had 
some pretty cold weather for Georgia that winter; once or 
twice I think I saw ice; it was thin, perhaps; we never 
have much ice there. 

"Immediately upon the west side of the stockade, and 
between there and the depot, there was timber scattered. 
On the north side, beyond the cook-house a little, there 
was plenty of timber; on the south side plenty had been 



4f, UASTlLkS OF Tut: COSFEDKIiACY. 

cut ill logs nnil lay there, and down by the hospiiiil there 
WHS plenty. That is a woody country, and there was 
plenty of wood within a mile. It was line timber, and 
could have been made into .shingles or claplxjards. I did 
not see any of it used to make 8helt<>r for the prison- 
ers. / rvijrvt to say that the aupply of iiuotl hyih not 
siijjicu'ut to h'rjt the prigomrs from \rhat ice term fnez- 
iuij to death.^^ 



CHAPTER IT. 

Andersonville — More Evidence, 

/"^ UCH is a small portion of the horrors aud 
^^^S needless cruelties revealed in the testimony of 
^•-^ Professor Jones and Doctor Bates, both Con- 
federates. Let us now listen to Lieutenant-Colonel 
D. T. Chandler, Inspector General for the Confed- 
eracy, testifying before a committee of Congress 
appointed to investigate the treatment of prisoners. 
He says: — 

"I was in the sei-vice of the Confederate go verninent 
from February, 1863, until the close of the war. I held 
the appointment of Lieutenant-Colonel in the Adjutant- 
General's Department, and latterly was assigned to duty 
as Inspector General. I was the officer who made the 
report signed ' D. T. Chandler,' which was read to the 
Court yesterday. I have no retraction whatever to make 
in regard to the condition of the prison at Andersonville, 
as represented in my report. I devoted about a week — 
something less than a week — to an inspection of that 
place. The report was based upon information conveyed 
to me in official communications from General Winder, 
and the officers of his staff, inspection of the books and 
papers, the records of the different offices of that post, 
and actual inspection of the troops, the stockade, and the 
hospital. I will further state that I had some conversa- 



18 UASTILKS UF THE COSFKDEIiACY. 

tioii with tbo prisoners iu tho stockado. I noticotl that 
(icufrul ^Vin^U•r Hfomod very inilifTerent to tho welfare 
of tho prisoners, indisposed to do anvthini;, or to do as 
much as I thought he on^ht to do to alh<viate their snf 
ferint^s. I remonstrated with him as well as I conKl,aud 
he usod that lanj^uai^o which I reported to the depart- 
ment with reference to it." 

" Quest inv : What jiarticnlur laii;;uafjo do yon allude 
to?" 

^^ Answer: When I spoke of the great mortality 
existing among tho prisoners, and pointed out to him 
that the sickly season was coming on, and that it must 
necessarily increase unless something was done for their 
relief - the swamp, for instance, drained, and proper 
food furnished them, and in greater (juantity, and other 
sanitary suggestions which I made to him — he rej>lii'd 
to me that he thought it was better to let half of them 
die than to take care of them. 

'• I would like to state to the court that before he 
used this langiiage to me, my assistant who was with me. 
Major Hall, had reported to me that ln» hail used similar 
language to him. I nu'ution this to show the court that 
I am not mistaken, that my recollection is clear. My 
assistant, Major Hall, had n>})orted to mo otVicially that 
(ieiieral Winder had used this language in conversation 
with him altout tho prisoners. 1 told him I thought it 
incrediblo; tiiat ho must be mistaken. He told mo no; 
that he had said it not only onco but twice; and, a.s I 
have stated, ho sub.secjuently made use of this expression 
to mo. 

"I think the commissary niight hnvi>lM«(>u compelled 
to purcliase souio green corn that could have btM-n hail 



URGED REMOVAL OF GENERAL WINDER. 49 

in limited quantities. I think so from consultation with 
the officers there. I saw plenty of it, and cabbages in 
limited quantities might have been had. I made an 
estimate in my report that, exclusive of the swamp and 
streets, there was left about six square feet to a man 
within the stockade. 

" I urged on the department the removal of General 
Winder as the radical cause of many of the difficulties 
there. I believe that with another head of the establish- 
ment a good deal might have been done. He had not 
the inclination to exert himself. I also recommended the 
removal of the assistant commissary. General Winder 
was made Commissary General of prisoners after I had 
made my report. 

"On my return to Richmond in October I spoke to 
Colonel Chilton, Chief of the Bureau, with reference to 
my report, and he told me it had not yet been acted 
upon, that it was still on the secretary's desk. I returned 
again to Richmond the first week in February, and found 
from the same source that it had not then been acted on. 
The former secretary had been relieved, and General 
Breckenridge appointed secretary. At my instance, 
Colonel Chilton urged the department to take the matter 
up, for the reason that General Winder had rather 
denied the correctness of some statements that I made, 
and I made a counter report, furnishing evidence of the 
accuracy of my report. I went myself to Judge Camp- 
bell, and asked him to take it up, and he promised that 
he would do it. I do not believe it was ever taken up; 
that is to say, I do not believe it ever was decided. 
Judge Campbell might have been considering it at the 
time of the evacuation. 



50 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

"I do not pretend to say that I think the President 
did not know there was a prison at Andersonville, and 
the condition in which it was; I speak only of my 
individual report and the accompanying papers. 

" The stream that flows through the stockade is 
formed by two smaller streams that meet some hundred 
yards, as well as I remember, before entering the 
stockade. The banks of that stream are hilly, and there 
were troops, the Georgia reserves, camped on it, and the 
washings from the camp came down into the stream, 
and flowed through the stockade. This I pointed out to 
General Winder as wrong, and before I left there he had 
moved one regiment, and the other was under orders to 
move. I made no recommendations with reference to it; 
the men themselves complained of the stench arising 
from the vicinity of the stockade. I should think that 
after General Winder had been made Commissary 
General of prisoners he reported to the War Department 
through the Adjutant General. I suppose he was 
appointed by the Secretary of War. The order was 
dated War Department, and was signed by the Adjutant 
General." 

While the events described in Colonel Chand- 
ler's testimony were transpiring at Andersonville, 
Confederate officers and citizens of repute, as well as 
Southern newspapers located near the various prisons 
throughout the Confederacy, were depicting in letters 
and articles addressed to JefPerson Davis the deplor- 
able condition of the Federal captives, and begging 
for the sake of God and humanity, and for the honor 



''HORRIBLE NATIONAL sin:' 51 

of the Southern people and cause, that the shameful 
spectacle they were witnessing daily might be re- 
moved from human sight and a remedy speedily 
applied. 

In illustration of this fact the following letter 
addressed to Jefferson Davis, and which was among 
the captured Confederate archives at Eichmond after 
his flight, will serve as a type of hundreds of other 
similar appeals: 

"Statesburg, S. C, October 12, 1864. 
" To Jefferson Davis, President C. S. A., 
^^ Richmond, Va. 
^^Dear Sir: — Inclosed you will find an account of the 
terrible sufferings of the Yankee prisoners at Florence, 
S. C. In the name of all that is holy, is there nothing 
that can be done to relieve such dreadful suffering ? If 
such things are allowed to continue, they will surely 
draw down some awful judgment on our country. It is 
a most horrible natioyial sin that cannot go unpunished. 
If we cannot give them food and shelter, for God's sake 
parole them and send them back to Yankee land, but 
don't starve the miserable creatures to death. Don't 
think that I have any liking for the Y'^ankee; I have none. 
Those near and dear to me have suffered too much from 
their tyranny for me to have anything but hatred for 
them; but I have not yet become quite brute enough to 
know of such suffering without trying to do something 
even for a Yankee. Yours respectfully. 

" Sabina Dismukes." 



52 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY, 

Mr. Dismukes inclosed in this letter an account 
printed in the Sumicr Watchman descriptive of the 
horrible condition of the Federal prisoners at Flor- 
ence, S. C, and its receipt in Kichmond is shown by 
Mr. Davis' private secretary's endorsement, and also 
those of four other officials. 

Among the interesting witnesses in the Wirz 
trial was Ambrose Spencer, a citizen residing during 
the war about nine miles from Andersonville. A 
portion of his testimony was as follows: 

" I visited Andersonville during its occupation as a 
prison very frequently. I have seen the prisoner Cap- 
tain Wirz very frequently. I was there nearly every 
month during the time it was a prison; I doubt whether 
a month passed in which I was not there while it was in 
its crowded condition — every month except, perhaps, 
during March, 1865. I was at Andersonville constantly — 
nearly every month, as I have remarked. I had frequent 
opportunities of seeing the condition of the prisoners, 
not only from the adjacent hills, but several times on the 
outside of the stockade where the sentinels' grounds 
were. I had opportunities of talking at different times 
with the prisoners, not only at Andersonville, but after 
they had escaped in several instances, when they came 
to my house. I can only answer the question by saying 
that their condition was as wretched and as horrible as 
could well be conceived, not only from exposure to the 
sun, the inclemency of the weather, and the cold of the 
winter, but from the filth, from the absolute degradation 
which was evident in their condition. I have seen that 



''MUD TWELVE INCHES DEEPr 53 

stockade after three or four days' rain when the mud, I 
should say, was twelve inches deep on both the hills. 
The prisoners were walking or wading through that mud. 
The condition of the stockade perhaps can be expressed 
most aptly by saying, that in passing up and down the 
railroad, if the wind was favorable, the odor from the 
stockade could be detected at least two miles. 

" I believe I am familiar with the surrounding 
country. That section of Southwestern Georgia is well 
supplied with mills, both grist-miils, flour-mills and saw- 
mills. One of them, a large one, is owned by a gentle- 
man named Drew. There are four others of considerable 
capacity. There is one saw-mill at a distance of six 
miles from Andersonville, owned by Mr. Stewart, that 
goes by steam. There is another saw- mill about five 
miles from Andersonville that goes by water. There are 
saw-mills on the road above Andersonville. As for grist- 
mills, there are five in the neighborhood of Andersonville, 
that farthest off being about twelve miles distant. Of 
these mills the water-mills are run nearly the entire year, 
except occasionally in the summer months; in the months 
of July and August they may be temporarily suspended 
owing to the want of water, but not for any length of 
time. It is a very heavily timbered country, especially 
in the region adjoining Andersonville; it may be termed 
one of the most densely timbered countries in the United 
States. As for its fertility. Southwestern Georgia is 
termed, I believe, the 'Garden of America.' It was 
termed the Garden of the Confederacy, as having sup- 
plied the greater part of the provisions of the rebel army. 
It struck me that there waS an uncommon supply of 
vegetables in 1864. Heretofore at the South there has 



54 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

been but little attention paid to gardens on a large scale; 
but last year a very large supply of vegetables was 
raised, as I understood, for the purpose of being disposed 
of at Andersonville. Indeed, tbere was not a day that 
passed that the trains were not loaded going from Ameri- 
cus up to Andersonville with persons carrying vegetables 
there. I know that some ofificer at Andersonville (I can- 
not say who it was) had agents at Americas to purchase 
vegetables, aad large amounts of vegetables were sent up 
daily or weekly. 

"I know of lumber having been used at Anderson- 
ville. I was there during June and July very frequently, 
at the time when Governor Brown had called out the 
militia of the State. The militia of Southwestern Georgia 
were stationed at Andersonville, and their tents were all 
floored with good lumber, and a good many shelters of 
lumber were put up by the soldiers. I noticed a good 
many tents that were protected from the sun by boards. 
There seemed to be no want of lumber at that time 
among the Confederate soldiers. 

"I did not take any regular thermometrical observa- 
tions during the summer of 1864 and the winter of 1864-5, 
but I had a thermometer, and every day, sometimes two 
or three times a day, I examined it. I generally made it 
a rule to look at it in the morning when I got up, again 
about noon, and then in the evening. So far as I 
remember, the range of the thermometer during the 
summer of 1864 was very high. I think I have seen it 
as high as 110 degrees in the shade. Once, and only 
once, I put the thermometer out in the sun on an 
extremely hot day in June, 1864. It ranged then, if my 
memory serves me right, from 127 to 130 degrees that day. 



'' HE WAS NEARLY frozen:' 55 

"Last winter, according to my experience during 
more than twenty-five years' residence in Georgia, was 
the coldest winter we have ever had there. I have seen 
the thermometer as low as twenty and twenty-two 
degrees above zero, from eight to ten below the freezing 
point; one night it was colder than that; it was the night 
of the -ith of January. It is very distinctly impressed 
on my memory. During the night I was Avaked up by 
my wife, who told me some one was calling me in front 
of my house. I opened the window (it was excessively 
cold) and asked who was there. A voice replied 'A 
friend.' I answered that I had no friends at that time 
of night and very few anyhow in that country. He said 
that he was a friend of mine and wanted to come near 
the fence to speak to me. I told him my dog would bite 
him if he came to the fence. He then approached and 
said he was an Andersonville prisoner, and asked me, 
calling me by name, if I lived there. I told him I was 
the man and to wait a moment. I dressed myself, went 
out and chained my dog, and brought the prisoner in. 
He was nearly frozen; he could hardly stand; he had on 
only one shoe, and that was a poor one, and had a 
stocking upon the other foot. He was clad in the thin 
army flannel of the United States, badly worn; he had on 
a pair of light blue pantaloons which were badly worn. 
This was on a Wednesday morning, and he told me he 
had made his escape from Andersonville on the Saturday 
previous; that he had been apprehended and taken to 
Americus, where he had made his escape from the guard 
the night before and was directed to my house by a 
negro. I asked him if he was not nearly frozen ; he said 
he was. I looked at the thermometer then, and it was 



56 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

eighteen degrees above zero. This was about two o'clock 
in the morning — between one and two o'clock. 

"I know that efforts were being made by the ladies 
of my county to relieve the prisoners at Andersonville; at 
one time a general effort was made. All that I know is 
that a gentleman named Mr. Davies, a Methodist presiding 
elder, exerted himself to induce the ladies to contribute 
clothing and provisions to the Federal hospital at Ander- 
sonville. A large amount of provisions was collected — 
some three or four wagon loads, if I am not mistaken — 
and sent up there. I believe that the effort failed. 
First, the provost-marshal refused a pass to carry the 
provisions to the hospital; and when application was 
made by Dr. Head, who acted as spokesman for the 
ladies, to General Winder, it was positively refused to 
them. I had a conversation with General Winder three 
days afterward. The same matter then came up. General 
Winder stated, accompanied with an oath, that he 
believed the whole country was becoming 'Yankee,' and 

that he would be d d if he would not put a stop to it. 

If he couldn't one way, he would in another. I remarked 
that I did not think it was any evidence of 'Yankee ' or 
Union feeling to exhibit humanity. He said there was 
no humanity about it; that it was intended as a slur on 
the Confederate Government and a covert attack on him. 
I told him I had understood it was done at his request; 
that he had requested Mr. Davies to bring this about. 

He said it was a d d lie; that he had not requested 

anything of the kind; that for his own part he would as 

lief the d d Yankees would die there as anywhere 

else; that, upon the whole, he did not know but that it 
was better for them. That was his language, or words 



''HOUNDS TO CATCH ESCAPED PRISONERS:' 57 

to that effect. Captain Wirz was not present at that 
time; my wife was with me at the time. There were 
other ladies present, but I don't think I knew any of 
them. They were not part of the committee." 

" Question. In what way did General Winder speak 
of the ladies and their humane effort?" 

" Ansiuer. He used the most opprobrious language 
that could possibly be used — language that no gentle- 
man could listen to, especially in the presence of his wife, 
without resenting it in some way — language utterly 
unfit to be used in the presence of ladies. 

"I know Turner who had the hounds very well; his 
name was Wesley W. Turner." 

" Question. What did you ever hear him say as to 
his duties there and what he was receiving?" 

" Ansiver. li, was some time in the early part of 1864 
— March or April, T think. He had purchased a piece 
of land up in the same district in which my place is. I 
met him one day in Americus, and asked him if he was 
going to settle that land. He said he was not; that he 
was making more money now than anybody in that 
country. I inquired how he was making it. He said 
the Confederate government was paying him for keeping 
hounds to catch escaped prisoners. I asked him if he got 
his pay from Richmond. He said ' No, he did not trouble 
Richmond; that old Captain Wirz was his paymaster.' I 
asked him how much he received; my impression is that 
he did not tell me what he received. He told me he was 
making more money than any one else in that country; 
better than cultivating ground. That was early in the 
history of that prison — I think during March or April. 
It was while he was there on diity; he told me that he 
then had a pack of hounds, and was employed there. 



58 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

"I know W. S. Winder — 'Sid 'Winder, as he is 
called. I saw him at the time he was laying out the 
prison, between the Ist and 15th of December, 1863. I 
went up to Andersonville with him and four or five other 
gentlemen, out of curiosity to see how the prison was to 
be laid out. When we had arrived there the limits of the 
prison had all been marked. They were then digging a 
trench to put the stockade posts in. Workmen were busy 
cutting down trees in and about where the stockade was. 

"In the course of conversation I inquired of W. S. 
Winder if it was proposed to erect barracks or shelter of 
any kind inside the stockade. He replied that it was not; 

that the d d Yankees who would be put in there 

would have no need of them. I asked him why he was 
cutting down all the trees, and suggested that they would 
prove a shelter to the prisoners, from the heat of the sun 
at least. He made this reply, or something similar to it: 
'That is just what I am going to do; lam going to build 

a pen here that ivill kill more d d Yankees than can 

be destroyed at the front' Those ivere very nearly his 
words, or equivalent to them.''' 

" Question. What was the general temper and spirit 
of his talk with regard to those prisoners ? " 

^^Ansicer. The opinion that I formed of him was 
anything but creditable to his feelings, his humanity, or 
his gentlemanly bearing. I am not aware that I ever 
had a conversation with General Winder that he did not 
curse more or less, especially if the subject of Anderson- 
ville was brought up. I can only reply to your question 
by saying that I considered him a brutal man; that I 
drew from his conduct and conversation as I observed 
them. I looked upon him as a man utterly devoid of 
all kindly feeling and sentiment." 



" THEY DIED SO FAST." 59 

" Question. How generally, so far as you observed, 
were the sufferings and horrors of the Andersonville pen 
known throughout the South ? " 

'■'■ Ansiver. So far as my knowledge and information 
went, the knowledge of those sufferings was general; it 
was so at least throughout the southern part of the 
Southern States; I cannot speak specially in regard to 
the neighborhood of Richmond. The matter was dis- 
cussed in the newspapers constantly, and in private circles. 
Perhaps I might have heard more of it than most because 
it dwelt more on my mind; but it was a general subject 
of conversation throughout the entire Southern part of 
the Confederacy." 

Testimony of Eev. William John Hamilton, on 
the Wirz trial: 

" I am the pastor of the Catholic church in Macon, 
Ga. I visited Andersonville three times; it was one of 
the missions attached to my church. I went there, I 
think, in the month of May, 1864, and spent a day there. 
The following week I went there and spent three days 
among the prisoners and then returned and wrote a report 
on the condition of the hospital and stockade there to my 
bishop, in order that he might send the requisite number 
of priests to visit the prisoners; and I visited it again 
after the prisoners had been removed from Anderson- 
ville to Thomasville. I visited the hospital and the 
stockade, discharging my duties as a priest of the 
Catholic Church. On this, my second visit to the 
stockade, I found, I think, twenty-three thousand pris- 
oners; at least the prisoners told me themselves there 
were that number. I found the place extremely crowded, 



60 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

witli a great deal of sickness and sufPering among the 
men. I was kept so busy administering the sacrament 
to the dying that I had to curtail a great deal of the 
service, for the reason they were so numerous. They 
died so fast, I waited only upon those of my own church; 
they wei-e the only persons who demanded my ministra- 
tions. When I speak of the number of dying I mean 
those among the members of my own church, and do not 
include others." 

^^ Question. Give the court some idea of the condi- 
tion of the stockade." 

^^ Answer. I found the stockade extremely filthy; 
the men all huddled together and covered with vermin. 
The best idea I can give the court of the condition of the 
place is perhaps this: I went in there with a white linen 
coat on, and I had not been in there more than ten min- 
utes when a gentleman drew my attention to the condi- 
tion of my coat. It was all covered with vermin, and I had 
to take my coat oil and leave it with one of the guards, 
and perform my duties in my shirt sleeves, the place was 
so filthy. The first person I conversed with on entering 
the stockade was a countryman of mine, a member of 
the Catholic Church who recognized me as a clergyman. 
I think his name was Farrell; he was from the north of 
Ireland. He came over toward me and introduced him- 
self. He was quite a boy; I do not think, judging from 
his appearance, that he could have been more than 
sixteen years old. I found him without a hat, and with- 
out any covering on his feet, and without jacket or coat; 
JBe told me that his shoes had been taken from him on 
the battlefield. I found the boy sufPering very much 
from a wound on his right foot; in fact, the foot was 




He stepped across the dead line and begged to be shot. 
— See page 6i . 



''REQUESTED THE GUARD TO SHOOT HIM:' 61 

split open like an oyster, and on inquiring the cause they 
told me it was from exposure to the sun in the stockade, 
and not from any wound received in battle. I took off 
my boots and gave him a pair of socks to cover his feet, 
and told him I would bring him some clothing as I 
intended to return to Andersouville the following week. 
I had to return to Macon to get another priest to take 
my place on Sunday. When I returned the following 
week, on inquiring for this man Farrell, his companions 
told me he had stepped across the dead-line and re- 
quested the guard to shoot him. He was not insane at 
the time I was conversing with him. It was three or 
four days after that when I was asking for him. I think 
it was the latter part of May, 1864, 

"When I went into the hospital I found it almost as 
crowded as the stockade was; the men were dying very 
rapidly from scurvy, diarrhcea and dysentery; and as far 
as I could observe, I could not see that they received 
any medical treatment whatsoever, or any medicines at 
all. They were in tents; the hospital was composed of 
tents arranged in avenues; and I did not see that they 
had anything under them but the ground; in some cases 
I think they had dried leaves that they had gathered 
together. In my ministrations at the hospital I saw one 
surgeon, the surgeon in charge there at the time, Dr. 
White. 

********* 

" When I visited the stockade there was no shelter 
at all so far as I could see, except that some of the men 
who had their blankets had put them up on little bits 
of roots that they had abstracted from the ground; but 
I could not see any tents, or shelter of any other kind. 



62 BASTILES OF THE COI^FKDERACY. 

I got the names of several prisoners who had relatives 
living in the South, and wrote to their friends when I 
returned to Macon, and I had some tents introduced 
there; they were sent down and the men received them. 

" During my second visit to the prison I was told 
there was an Irishman over at the extreme end of the 
stockade who was calling for a priest. I suppose he 
had heard that I had visited the prison the day before, 
and he was very anxious to see a priest and was calling 
for one all over the stockade. 

"There is a branch that runs right through the 
centre of the stockade, and I tried to cross the branch, 
but was unable to do so as the men were crowding 
around trying to get into the water to cool themselves. I 
could not get over the branch, and had to leave the 
stockade without seeing the man. The heat was intoler- 
able; there was no air at all in the stockade. The logs 
of which the stockade was composed were so close 
together that I could not feel any fresh air inside; and 
with a strong sun beaming down on it and no shelter at 
all, of course the heat must have been insufPerable; at 
least I felt it so. 



"I would frequently have to creep on my hands and 
knees into the holes the men had burrowed in the 
ground, and stretch myself alongside of them to hear 
their confessions. I found them almost living in vermin 
in those holes; they could not be in any other condition 
but a filthy one, because they got no soap and no change 
of clothing, and were there all huddled up together. 



''FORTY DIED DURING THE NIGHT;' 63 

"I was in there early the next morning, and in going 
down one of the avenues I counted from forty to sixty 
bodies of those who had died during the night in the 
hospital. 

" I have seen the men making little places from a 
foot to a foot and a half deep, and stretching their 
blankets right over them. I have crawled into such 
places frequently to hear the confessions of the dying. 
They would hold from one to two; sometimes a prisoner 
would share his blanket with another and allow him to 
get under shelter, 

"When I returned from the stockade after my 
second visit to it at the latter end of May, I represented 
these things to General Cobb. I wrote to my Bishop 
and told him that these men were dying in large num- 
bers; that there were many Catholics there, and that 
they required the services of a priest; and he sent up 
Father Whelan. Father Whelan expressed a desire to 
see General Cobb before he went down to the stockade. 
I called upon General Cobb; I told him I had been 
there, and gave him a description of the place as well as 
I could, and he asked me what I would recommend to be 
done, as he intended to write to Richmond with regard 
to the condition of that place. 

'■^ After I found out from his conversation that 
nothing more could he done for the bodily comfort of the 
men, oiving to the stringency of the blockade, etc., I 
advised him to parole those men upon their own word of 
honor, and take them doivn to Jacksonville, Fla., and 
turn them into the Federal lines. Whether that recom- 
mendation was acted on or not I do not know; he asked 
my opinion and I gave it. At that time when I told 



64 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

him of the condition of things as I found them there it 
was known to the whole country, for it was published iu 
the newspapers of the South. 

" When General Cobb asked me to give him a descrip- 
tion of the condition of the place, he remarked, I think, 
that he was going to write to Richmond, and wanted me 
to give him some information on the point. He remarked, 
also, that he would like me to give him a description 
because he knew the relations that existed between a 
Catholic priest and members of his church, and that they 
would be more unreserved in communicating with me 
than with others." 

The witness AVilliam M. Peebles, Confederate 
clerk, sworn: 

" I saw several men in the stocks. I did not learn 
their names. They were Federal prisoners. I was pass- 
ing around one day during a hard rain, and saw a pris- 
oner in the stocks. He seemed to be near drowning. I 
rode up and put an umbrella over him; I passed up 
to Captain Wirz's headquarters and told him the 
prisoner was there and might drown. He remarked, 
'let him drown,' using an oath. His words, as well as I 

can remember, were — 'Let the d d Yankee drown; 

I don't care.' In a few moments some one from his 
headquarters went down and released the prisoner — 
took him out from the stocks. It was during a very 
hard rain. The man's head was kind of erect, and it 
was raining down in his face; he looked as though he 
would drown; that was what caused me to make the 
report." 




^vwllJi^ 



4^3-<^.r- 



A sample of John Winder's " Kindness" to Union Prisoners 
See page 65. 



" WHEN THE VICTIM WAS 'PUT UP.'" 65 

H. M. Davidson, a Union prisoner of war, for 
a time paroled for duty as surgeon's clerk, whose 
statement was also incorporated into the report of 
the committee of the House on the treatment of 
Union prisoners of war, speaking of punishments 
inflicted at Andersonville, and their life there, says: 

"The prisoner upon recapture was subjected to 
several grades of punishment, the first of which was the 
standing stocks ***** 

Above these bars, and at right angles with them in the 
middle of the frame, were two other bars containing a 
notch for the neck, which also had a lateral and perpen- 
dicular motion, the latter to enable them to be adjusted 
to the height of the culprit. At the bottom were two 
similar and parallel bars, with notches for the legs. 
When the victim was 'put up,' his feet were first fastened, 
and then his arms extended on a line parallel with the 
shoulders, and also fastened, and finally his neck 'shut 
in,' when he was left to his misery for twenty-four hours. 
In this painful position, unable to change in the least 
degree, starving, thirsting, bleeding, with the hot sun of a 
July or August day pouring Hoods of liquid fire upon his 
unprotected head, the sufferer paid the initial penalty of 
his rash attempt to regain his liberty. 

" After the stocks came the ball and chain. For this 
punishment two men were usually required; a thirty-two- 
pound cannon ball was fastened to the outside leg of 
each with a chain about two feet long, and another ball 
weighing sixty-four pounds chained between them. The 
chains by which these balls were attached to the legs 
were so short that they could be carried only by attach- 



66 B A STILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

ing a string to the thirty two-pounder and raising it by 
the hand; the sixty-four-pound weight was supported by 
a stick when the victims wished to 'walk out.' The 
'jewelry' was continued on the men for three or four 
weeks, or during the whim of Captain Wirz. 

"There was one refinement on the ball and chain 
which deserves special mention. It was devised by Cap- 
tain Wirz himself, and did great credit to his fiendish 
nature and his hellish gust for torment. It was denom- 
inated the 'chain gang,' and was used only in one 
instance. The gang at first contained twelve men. They 
were first fastened together with short chains twenty 
inches to two feet in length, which were attached to iron 
collars riveted around their necks, each man being thus 
chained to the man on his right and left, and the twelve 
forming a circle. To one leg of each a thirty two-pound 
ball was chained, while one sixty-four- pounder was 
fastened to every four by the other leg. There was no 
possible manner in which the men could lie down, sit 
down, or stand erect with any degree of ease; yet they 
were kept in this state for four weeks in the open ground 
outside the stockade, exposed alike to storm and sun, 
with no covering but their ragged clothing and no pro- 
tection against the cold dews of the night. One of the 
gang was sick with chronic dysentery, but the surgeon's 
clerks were all forbidden to give him any medicine, and 
he died under the torture. He was taken out of his 
irons after he was dead, and the remaining eleven forced 
to carry his share of the weight attached to themselves 
until the period of their torture had expired. The crime 
for which these men were 'put up' in this atrocious man- 
ner was an attempted escape; some of them had broken 



'' DELIBERATELY POISONED BY VACCINATION:' 07 

from the hospital, and others had been recaptured once 
before. 

"The prisoners who had not been recently vaccin- 
ated were compelled under severe penalties to undergo 
this operation, the surgeon having been requested, it was 
said, by the United States Government to do this as a 
preventive against the small-pox. It seemed strange to 
us that here, where instances of that disease were so 
extremely rare, such an order should be given; but the 
sequel showed the devilish cunning of the authorities at 
Andersonville. The virus was impure, and if the inocu- 
lation with the poison failed (as it did in many instances) 
of carrying off the patient, the wound would not heal 
under the influence of the heat, starvation and impure 
air, and invariably terminated in horrible-looking ulcers. 
I have said that the virus was impure; i judge it to have 
been so from its effects and not from a chemical analysis 
of it; but there were cases of inoculation which had been 
made at Danville three months previous to our removal 
to Camp Sumter that took the same form as every case 
assumed after our incarceration there. The worst cases 
at Andersonville were caused by the vaccination. The 
ravages of the scurvy, it is true, were fearful, and it 
worked in slight scratches and slight sores caused by 
the bite of insects, but in none of these did it assume the 
horrible form that characterized the inoculated wounds; 
and the only inference that can be drawn from this fact 
is, that our prisoners were deliberately poisoned by vac 
cination. 

"From my position (as surgeon's clerk) I could see 
the men as they came into the inclosure, and trace the 



68 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

line far back into the stockade itself. There on the road 
running nearly across the area, the wretched invalids 
had gathered in a dense crowd. Some were standing, or 
leaning, faint, emaciated and weak, upon their stronger 
comrades; others were lying down upon the bare ground, 
and over all there hovered a hideous spectre of death, 
which was reflected upon their squalid forms and upon 
their thin, pale faces, and in their large, hollow eyes 
that stared glassily upon us. The earth was black with 
human beings — a living, writhing, famishing mass of 
agonizing life. 

" Three thousand men daily visited the surgeons at 
this place for remedies, besides those to whom medicine 
was administered without a daily examination. On my 
own book there were at one time nine hundred and forty- 
five names of sick men under treatment by one surgeon. 
Taking this as a basis the fourteen clerks would have in 
charge thirteen thousand, two hundred and thirty patients; 
and these were exclusive of the men who refused to report 
at sick-call, and those who were confined in the hos- 
pitals — the latter numbering about two thousand men. 

" At this time it is believed that there were not five 
thousand well men among the thirty-two thousand con- 
fined in the stockade. Those who had been longest 
in the stockade, and those who had come among us 
in a destitute condition were the earliest and greatest 
sufPerers. It required time, even in that den of filth and 
disease and upon the scanty allowance given us, to break 
down the strong constitutional health of those men; but 
time did effect it, though some struggled long and 
bravely for life. 

" The scurvy is another and most frequent disease, 
and like the gangrene can receive only temporary relief 



''DEADLY VAPORS FROM THE SWAMPSr 69 

here. Nearly one-half of the number of patients examined 
daily were afflicted with this fearful scourge, very few 
of whom recovered, some of them lingering for weeks 
before the fatal termination of the disease. 

"The patients must inevitably die; some of them 
may live a few weeks longer. Eighty of those eighty- 
seven men who came to-day for relief for other diseases 
besides scurvy, will lie beneath the turf, in yonder 
Golgotha, beyond the reach of the atrocious tortures 
that have made .their last days a hell. 

" In the month of June, 1864, there wore twenty-two 
days of rain, and the sky was not clear of clouds during 
all that dreary period for a moment. At times the heavens 
opened and poured floods of water down upon us ; then 
the sun forced its way through a rift of clouds, and for a 
few minutes scorched us with its flames, when his fire 
was extinguished by another torrent. The men were 
drenched in their open pen during the day, and at night 
they lay down, still drenched, to sleep upon beds of sand 
which were saturated with water. When the long rain 
ceased at last the hot sun burst out upon them, raising 
deadly vapors from the swamps, which they breathed, 
and scorching and parching them with fire. The ther- 
mometer stood at 104 degrees in the shade, and in the 
Dpen ground the heat was terrific. In consequence of 
this storm, malignant fevers broke out among the pris- 
oners, and for a long time they raged with fearful 
violence. Pneumonia prevailed to a very great extent, 
and hundreds fell victims to its ravages. These cases 
continued for many weeks, and we find their diagnosis 
upon every clerk's list during the months of July and 



70 B A STILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

August. Erysipelas also appeared, but its career was 
soon run, for the unhappy patient died within a few 
days, unless the little washing of iodine which was 
applied to the infected spot, succeeded in checking it at 
once. The glaring sun had smitten men with blindness, 
and they groped their way darkly among their com 
rades. 

"Yet in all this misery, squalor and filth there was 
not a ray of hope. The men must suffer on without suc- 
cor and without help; the weary days seemed months, 
and the weeks an eternity, till it was as if they had been 
removed to a land of fiends, which the omnipresence of 
God could not reach, and a demon more merciless, more 
relentless than the prince of hell ruled over us. 

" From eight o'clock until two the work of examining 
the sick continued. Day after day, for weeks and months, 
those surgeons labored, breathing the unwholesome air, 
and in constant contact with those horrible diseases; but 
they were patient, faithful men, and their sympathy with 
the victims often benefited them as much as the medicine 
they prescribed. But they were compelled to act under 
the orders of General Winder and of Captain Wirz, and 
could do little beyond expressing their abhorrence of 
the barbarity with which we were treated, and their wish 
to alleviate our sufferings. I gladly record the little acts 
of kindness performed by them, for they were verdant 
spots in that vast Sahara of misery. Doctors Watkins, 
Rowzie, Thornburn, Reeves, Williams, James, Thompson, 
Pilott and Sanders deserve, and will receive, the lasting 
gratitude of the prisoners of Andersonville. 



" FAMINE, FAMINE, EVERYWHERE:' 71 

" I have seen the field of battle, and walked among 
the dead many days after the conflict, and witnessed the 
unburied bodies of men thrown together in heaps by a 
bursting shell, slowly decaying in the hot sun, but the 
stench arising from them, and their horrid appearance 
were less sickening and less repulsive than this. I have 
seen men in this hospital sufPer amputation again and 
again in a fruitless effort to stay the ravages of this 
fearful gangrene; and under the knife, and while lying 
on the ground blistering and burning, the ceaseless gnaw- 
ing within forced from their otherwise silent lips the low, 
moaning, pleading cry for food; and I have listened to 
this heartrending call, and looked upon those emaciated 
limbs till my blood boiled with helpless rage against the 
worse than brutal villains who planned those atrocious 
crimes and the coward who delighted in carrying out 
their details. 

" No language can describe this bed of rottenness. 
Since the tongue of man first learned to syllable his 
thoughts such cruelties were never yet devised and 
practiced, and words are wanted to depict them. The 
surgeons made their reports, in which were represented 
the true condition of these dying men, and begged for 
reform, for food and covering; but they might as well 
have sought mercy from death — better have done so, for 
death is merciful sometimes, but our tormentors never. 
The gangrene wards were the worst in the hospital, but 
the others were shocking. Famine, famine, everywhere. 

" The dead house had been constructed of insuffi- 
cient dimensions to contain the bodies of all that died. 
Sometimes forty, often thirty, were placed upon the 



72 B A STILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

ground outside its limits, where they lay in the open air, 
•with some vain attempt at tiuiformity in their arrange- 
ment. Within and around this place the final results of 
our treatment were to be seen. Here, indeed, were the 
fruits of the 'natural agencies' which were to do the 
tcork ' faster than the bullet.' Nor were the number of 
the dead few and occasional. During the month of 
August two thousand nine hundred and ninety bodies 
were deposited in the dead house previous to burial, an 
average of more than ninety six per day, exceeding by 
one thousand the largest brigade engaged in the battle 
of Stone River, and being nearly seven-eighths as many 
as the entire division of Brigadier General Van Cleve in 
that famovis engagement. But during the latter part of 
the month the mortality was much greater than at the 
first, the number of dead being 100, 110, 120, 125 and 
140 per day. 

"In the early morning the dead-cart came for the 
bodies; this was an army wagon, without covering, drawn 
by four mules and driven by a slave. The bodies were 
tossed into the cart without regularity or decency, being 
thrown upon one another as logs or sticks are packed in 
a pile. In this manner, with their arms and legs hang- 
ing over the sides, and their heads jostling and beating 
against each other, as the sable driver whistling a merry 
strain hauled them to the grave, hurrying rapidly over 
roots and stumps, the Federal prisoners were carried out 
to the burial. 

"The cemetery was located northwest of the stock- 
ade, and nearly a mile from the hospital, upon a beauti- 
ful open spot surrounded by the forests of pine, and 
slightly sloping toward the northeast. The dead were 



" THE LITTLE WORD ' UNKNO WN: " 73 

buried by a squad of paroled prisoners selected for this 
purpose. A trench running due north and south was 
dug about four feet in depth, six feet wide, and of suffi- 
cient length to contain the bodies for the day. In this 
the bodies were placed side by side, with their faces to 
the east, and the earth thrown in on them. A little 
mound a foot in height was raised over each body; a 
stake, branded with the number on the label, placed at 
the head of each, and without a prayer said over the 
dead, without a tear from the strangers that performed 
the last rite, the ceremony was ended. The number 
upon the stake referred to a register kept in the office of 
the chief surgeon, by Mr, Atwater, a paroled prisoner, in 
which were the number, name, rank, company, regiment 
(when these were known), date of death, and name of 
disease. This register was kept with great care, and if 
it is still in existence, will correctly refer the inquiring 
friend to the spot where the loved one lies. But some 
of those who died in the stockade expired without reveal- 
ing their name; of such only the number is recorded, 
and the little word ' unknown ' comprises all that is left 
of many a brave man's history." 

Warren Lee Goss, a Union soldier and non- 
commissioned officer, who was confined for many 
months in six prisons besides Andersonville, has 
vividly depicted the scenes of cruelty and suffering 
he witnessed in them all. The following are brief 
extracts from his sworn statement: 

"One of the great instruments of death in the 
Andersonville prison was the ' dead-line.' This line con- 



74 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

sisted of a row of stakes driven into the ground, with 
narrow board strips nailed down upon the top, at the 
distance of about fifteen feet from the stockade on the 
interior side. This line was closely guarded by sentinels 
stationed above on the stockade, and any person who 
approached it, as many unconsciously did, as in the 
crowded condition of the prison was often unavoidable, 
was shot dead, with no warning whatever to admonish 
him that death was near. 

"An instance of this kind came to my notice the 
second day I was in prison. A poor, one-legged cripple 
placed one hand on the dead-line to support him while 
he got his crutch, which had fallen from his feeble grasp 
to the ground. In this position he was shot through the 
lungs, and laid near the dead-line, writhing in torments 
most of the forenoon, until at last death came to his 
relief. None dared approach him to relieve him through 
fear of the same fate. The guard loaded his musket 
after he had performed this dastardly act, and, grinning 
with satisfaction, viewed the body of the dying murdered 
man for nearly an hour with apparent pleasure, occasion- 
ally raising his gun to threaten any one who from 
curiosity or pity dared to approach the poor fellow. 

" Scarcely a night or day passed but the sharp crack 
of a rifle told of the murder of another defenseless vic- 
tim. Men becoming tired of life committed suicide in 
this manner. They had but to get under the dead-line, 
or lean upon it, and their fate was sealed in death. 

" An incident of this kind came to my knowledge in 
July. A New York soldier had tried once or twice to 
escape, by which means he had lost his cooking utensils 



" STAR VA TION AND DISEASE:' 75 

and bis blanket, and was obliged to endure the rain and 
heat without protection, and to borrow, beg or steal 
cooking implements, eat his food raw, or starve. Lying 
in tbe rain often at night, followed by the tropical heat 
of the day, was torture which goaded him to desperation. 
He announced bis determination to die, and getting over 
the dead line was shot throusrh the heart. 



"The stench polluted and pervaded the whole 
atmosphere of tbe prison, and to get outside it seemed 
like a new development uf creation, so different was it 
from the poisonous vapors exhaled from this cess pool 
with which tbe prison air was reeking. During the day 
the sun drank up the most noxious of these vapors, but 
in the night tbe terrible miasma and stench pervaded the 
atmosphere almost to suffocation. 

******* ^:- * 

" Nothing ever before seen in a civilized country 
could give one an idea of tbe physical condition to which 
starvation and disease had reduced these men. It was 
only strange that men should retain life so long as to be 
reduced to the skeleton condition of the great mass of 
these men who died in prison. During one week there 
are said to have died thirteen hundred and eighty men! 
Death lost all its sanctity by reason of its frequent 
occurrence. Death by starvation and exposure was pre- 
ceded by a mild kind of insanity, or idiocy, when the 
mind felt not the misery of the body and was unable to 
provide for its wants. During July one could hardly 
step without seeing some poor victim in bis last agony. 
The piteous appeals of these famine -stricken men, their 



76 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

bones in some cases worn through their flesh, were 
enough to excite pity and compassion in hearts of stone. 

"I have spoken of a mild kind of insanity which 
precedes death by starvation, and a brooding melancholy 
in which the mind wanders from real to imaginary 
things. Private Peter Dunn, of my company, was an 
instance of this kind. At an early date of his imprison- 
ment he lost his tin cup, which was with him — as was 
commonly the case about the prison — the only cooking 
implement. His blanket was also lost, and he was left 
destitute of all shelter and of every comfort except that 
which was furnished him by companions who were suf- 
ferers in common with himself and not overstocked with 
necessaries and comforts. Gradually, as he wasted away, 
his mind wandered, and in his imagination he was the 
possessor of those luxuries which the imagination will 
fasten upon when the body feels the keenest pangs of 
hunger. With simple sincerity he would speak of some 
luxury which he imagined he had partaken of. Sud- 
denly a gleam of intelligence would overspread his face; 
he would speak of the prison, and say : ' This is a dread- 
ful place for the boys, isn't it? I don't enjoy myself 
when I have anything good to eat, there are so many 
around me who look hungry;' and then, gazing in my 
face, in the saddest modulations I ever heard in a human 
voice: 'You look hungry, too, Sarg. ;' and then, sinking 
his voice to a whisper, added: 'Oh dear! I'm hungry too 
sometimes.' 

"Poor Peter! He soon died a lingering death from 
starvation and exposure. In the lucid moments that 
preceded death he said, as I stood over his poor, famine- 



''POINT HIS FINGER TO HIS PALLID LIPS." "il 

pinched form, 'I'm dreadful cold and hungry, Sarg.' 
He again relapsed into a state of wandering, with the 
names of 'Mary' and 'Mother' upon his lips; and the last 
faint action of life, when he could no longer speak, was 
to point his finger to his pallid, gasping lips in mute en- 
treaty for food. 

"Charles E. Bent was a drummer in my company — 
a fine lad, with as big a heart in his small body as ever 
throbbed in the breast of a man. He was a silent boy, 
who rarely manifested any emotion, and spoke but 
seldom, but, as his comrades expressed it, ' kept up a 
thinking ' I observed nothing in his conduct or manners 
to denote insanity, until one afternoon about sun-down 
one of his comrades noticed the absence of a ring com- 
monly worn upon his hand, and inquired where it was. 
' When I was out just now,' he said, 'my sister came and 
took it and gave it to an angel.' The next day as the 
sun went down, its last rays lingered, it seemed to me, 
caressingly upon the dear, pallid face of the dead boy. 
His pain and sorrow were ended, and heartless men 
no longer could torture him with hunger and cruelty. 

"C. H. A. Moore was a drummer in my company — 
the only son of a widowed mother. All the wealth of 
maternal affection had been fondly lavished upon him. 
In him all her hopes were centered, and it was with great 
reluctance that she finally agreed to his enlistment. In 
prison he gradually wasted away until he died. The day 
previous to his death I saw and conversed with him, 
tried to encourage and cheer him, but a look of prema- 
ture age had settled over his youthful face, which bore 
but little semblance to the bright, expressive look he 
wore when he enlisted. He was perfectly sane and con- 



78 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

versed with uncommon clearness and method, as though 
his mind had been suddenly developed by intense suif er- 
ing. His face bore an unchanged, listless expression, 
which I have noticed in prison betokened the loss oi 
hope. He spoke of home and of his mother, but his 
words were all in the same key — monotonous and weary, 
with a stony, unmoved expression of countenance. On a 
face so young I never saw such indescribable hopeless- 
ness; he was despair petritied! and when I think of it 
even now, it pierces me to the heart. His was a linger- 
ing death by starvation and exposure, with no relief from 
unmitigated misery." 

From testimony of Thomas N. Way, of the 1st 
Ohio Volunteers: 

"I know of the use of hounds at Andersonville; 
they caught me three times. I remember about a soldier 
being torn to pieces by hounds. He was a young man 
whose name I don't know. I knew him by the name of 
Fred. He was about seventeen years old. When we 
heard the dogs coming, I and another prisoner who was 
with me, being old hands, climbed a tree. Fred tried to 
do so, but he had not got up when the hounds caught 
him by the foot and pulled him down. In less thaa 
three minutes he was torn to pieces. Turner, who owned 
the hounds, was close behind. He got up just as the 
man was torn up and secured the hounds and we came 
down. Fred was all torn to pieces and died. Turner 

said: 'It's good for the ; 

I wish they had torn the three of you to pieces.' " 

Felix Do La Baume, 35th New York Volunteers, 
an Andersonville prisoner, testified regarding the 
blood-hounds: 




'W 

The man climbing the tree represents Holm, and 1 am represented 
lying under the tree." — See page 79. 



''THE DOGS CAUGHT HOLD OF HIM:' 79 

•'I and Holm, who escaped with me, hid ourselves 
under a very large tree in a kind of mud-hole among the 
bushes and remained there over an hour; then we heard 
the dogs bark. An old Indian had once told me that in 
case of being overtaken by blood- hounds, I should pre- 
tend to be dead and the hounds would not attack me. 
So I told Holm to remain quiet in the bushes and not 
make any noise, but he was so frightened by the dogs 
that he tried to get up a tree so as not to be torn to 
pieces by them. While he was trying to get up the tree 
the dogs came up and caught hold of him by one of his 
legs, biting quite a large hole. I have drawn a repre- 
sentation of that scene. The man climbing the tree 
represents Holm, and I am represented lying under 
the tree. My comrade was torn very badly. We were 
brought back by a sergeant and the men who had the 
dogs." 

R. Bartley, of Alleghany City, Pa., a Union 
officer and prisoner of war, states as follows: 

"I was a lieutenant in the United States Signal 
Corps; was signal officer with Colonel Dahlgren's 
expedition to Richmond when he was killed and his body 
mutilated. With other officers of Colonel Dahlgren's 
force I was kept in close confinement with negro enlisted 
men in Libby Prison for five months and fourteen days, 
as felons not entitled to the treatment of prisoners of 
war. We were treated as brutes by the prison officials 
by orders from James A. Seddon, Rebel Secretary of 
War. When taken out of the cell to be carried South, 
the projecting bones of my body were cutting through 
the skin from starvation, which has left me permanently 
disabled, having lost the use of my eyes. I have known 



80 B A STILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

officers to be shot and bayoneted for no cause; and as 
for robbery, it was one of the lesser evils to which we 
were subjected." 

One might suppose that the extracts of testi- 
mony by Confederate doctors and officers as well as 
Union prisoners quoted in the foregoing pages, re- 
vealed a chapter of atrocities difficult to extend and 
almost impossible to conceive. As a matter of fact 
they are wholly inadequate to picture to human un- 
derstanding the unutterable woes and unnamable 
cruelties that transcend the realm of fancy, eclipsing 
Dante's Inferno and Milton's Hell. 

Dr. Valentine Mott, of New York — the foremost 
surgeon of his time, who expired on hearing the 
tidings of the assassination of President Lincoln, 
whose friend he was — declared before a committee 
of Congress, that in the active practice of his profes- 
sion as a physician and surgeon covering a period 
of over fifty years, and accustomed as he was to wit- 
nessing human suffering in all its most painful 
phases, none of the scenes witnessed in his per- 
sonal or professional life could begin to compare 
with the condition in which he found the released 
prisoners of Andersonville, Salisbury and Florence. 



CHAPTEK V. 

From Official Records and Confederate 
Archives. 

■^ ET us group some of the facts relating to 
I Southern prisons as they are substantiated 

^■^ both by the captured Confederate archives 
at Eichmond and the official records at Washington. 
The first batch of prisoners reached Anderson- 
ville on February 15, 18(34 The whole number 
received during its existence as a prison was 49,485. 
On August 9th, 18G4, there was found to be in the 
stockade 33,006. The number of deaths, as shown 
by the register kept in the chief surgeon's ofBce at 
the prison, was 12,031; numher of graves, 13,705. 
It frequently happened that from fifty to one 
hundred prisoners were found dead on the ground 
within the stockade when the gates were opened in 
the morning, and the dead wagon had to make several 
trips to carry off the corpses, which were piled in 
the wagon like cordwood, and the same Avagon would 
on its return trip be used to bring the prisoners their 
rations of meal for the day. The deaths on one day 
reached one hundred and forty. 



82 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

The shallow stream that ran through the camp 
and which supplied the prisoners with water, was 
constantly swarmed with thousands of sufPerers, 
ragged and alive with vermin, many suffering with 
frightful gangrene, scurvy, and other diseases then 
raging with fearful violence, until the water was 
liquid filth, and the banks on either side were 
trampled by the shoeless multitude into a festering 
morass that sent up fumes of pestilence and death. 
It was learned by actual count on one day that a 
prisoner died at Andersonville every eleven minutes, 
counting the whole twenty-four hours. 

Three hundred and twenty-eight escapes were 
made from the stockade. Of these, many who 
escaped and were re-taken were so savagely punished 
that they died under the torture. More than fifty 
died by being torn by the hounds regularly employed 
by the Confederate authorities to track escaping 
prisoners. To the number who died at Andersonville 
prison over five hundred must be added who died 
after their release and before they could reach their 
homes. 

For the burial of the dead, trenches varying 
from one hundred to two hundred feet in length were 
dug daily, and there were often bodies enough to fill 
them when placed side by side in an uncofiined state. 



''NEARLY ONE-FOURTH OF ALL." 83 

The thumbs aud toes of each corpse were held in 
burial position by bits of string. A small rude pine 
board was placed at each of their heads, on which 
was placed a number corresponding with the same 
number on the hospital register. 

The whole number of Union prisoners in Con- 
federate hands during the war was 188,000. The 
death-rate among the survivors of Southern prisons 
from the close of the war up to 1880 is estimated at 
seventeen per cent. The records of the War Depart- 
ment at Washington show that the mortality among 
the Confederate prisoners at Fort Delaware was for 
eleven months two per cent; and at Johnson's Island 
during twenty-one months there were 131 deaths out 
of six thousand prisoners. 

The deaths at Andersonville from Feb. 24, 
1861, to Sept. 21, 18C4 (seven months) numbered 
9,179. Per cent, of deaths, 23.31, or nearly one- 
fourth of all iJic prisoners confined there. The AVar 
Department estimates that twenty per cent, should 
be added to these figures for good reasons. Among 
these, the fact that all deaths were not recorded. 
This is sustained by this fact: 

Number of deaths shown by hospital records. . . 12,631 

Number of graves 13,705 

Difference 1,074 



84 B A STILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

The report of Captain Wirz for August, 18G4, 
shows the following: 

Prisoners on hand 31,678 

Died dui'ing month 2,993 

Average daily deaths 100 

Monthly per cent, of deaths 9.45 

Yearly per cent, of deaths *113.40 

The War Department report shows the follow- 
ing captures by the Confederates during the four 
years of the war: 

Federal officers 7,092 

Enlisted men 179,091 

Union citizens 1,902 

Total 188,145 

Per cent, of deaths, counting all Rebel prisons. 38.70 
The number of men who entered the Union 

armies was, by the War Department record . 2,335,951 
Number of Confederates captured by Union 

armies 476,189 

Paroled 248,599 

Number actually confined in Northern prisons. 227,590 
Mortality of Confederate soldiers ascertained 

by graves 30,152 

Per cent, of deaths 13.250 

If the monthly mortality among Confederates 
held in our prisons had been as great as in Southern 
prisons, taking the whole number of captures as a 
basis, the deaths in Northern prisons, instead of 

^Showing that all the prisoners would have died in less than 
ten and one-half months. 



" WHO DIED OUTNUMBERED THE SLAIiW' 85 

30,152, ivoidd have been 92,000. In other words, 
nearly two out of five, or forty out of each one 
hundred, died in their hands ; while one in seventeen, 
or sis of each one hundred, died in our hands. 

The number killed and v/ho died of wounds 
during the war, counting officers and men, white and 
colored, was 78,231. This, as against the 60,000 
who died in prison, or immediately after being 
released, shows a difference of but 18,231 more men 
killed in action and dying of wounds received in 
action than died from confinement in Confederate 
prisons. 

More men died in Andersonville prison alone 
than were killed in battle and died of wounds daring 
the whole Mexican war. The prisoners who died in 
that prison outnumbered the slain in the battles of 
Waterloo, Gettysburg and The Wilderness combined. 
Yet Andersonville, with its terrors and appalling 
harvest of death, was but a type of a score of other 
military prisons that existed throughout the Con- 
federacy under the personal supervision of Mr. 
Davis' confidential friend and agent, John H. 
Winder, a man infinitely more merciless and cruel 
than Marat. 

Careful estimates show that the averaere length 
of life in Andersonville was ninety-five days, assum- 



86 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

ing that a prisoner entered it in good health. "Well 
might Winder have inscribed over its portal the fate- 
ful sentence : " Wlio enfers here leaves hope hehiruV 

The sick and dying were left without attendance, 
medicine, or even a drink, and scores of the dead 
were left to decompose under the blistering sun and 
pollute the air which the more miserable living were 
forced to breathe. The sentinels looked down from 
their elevated posts upon thirty-five thousand fam- 
ishing men. Hope died within brave hearts that 
had never faltered at the cannon's mouth. Heaven 
never looked down upon a spectacle so pitiable, and 
although every detail of that cruel scene was familiar 
to Jefferson Davis, it had not the power to awaken a 
chord of pity in that frozen heart. 

In every rain it was a common sight to see poor 
sufferers whose weak stomachs revolted against the 
sickening water of the dirty ditch, lying on their 
backs in the sand with their mouths open to catch 
the pure drops that descended from the clouds, or 
holding up some rag of clothing to absorb a drink 
to slake their burning thirst. Many of, the fainting 
creatures crept into holes in the ground to escaj)e the 
fierce flood of fire poured down by a noon-day sun, 
and a rain following at night the miserable victims, 
unable to drag themselves out, were drowned in the 



BULLETS, POISON AND BLOODHOUNDS. 87 

pits that in daytime gave them shelter and at night 
a grave. 

During the existence of the prison not less than 
three hundred men were shot by the guards on the 
dead-line. Not less than fifty perished by the blood- 
hounds of Turner. From the compulsory vaccination 
with impure virus one hundred men at least lost the 
use of their arms, and from the same cause about 
two hundred died. An alphabetical list of the 
Andersonville dead copied from the hospital reg- 
ister and printed by the New York Tribune makes a 
volume nearly the size of the Century Magazine, and 
forms indeed a sad directory of a dead city! 

In illustration of this brief, sad and last record 
of the dead martyrs, the following is the entry of 
death for the sixteen-year-old brother of the writer, 
vfounded and captured in Sherman's march through 
Georgia: 

''Moran, T., Co. C, 89th Ills. Sept. 18, '64. 9187.'' 

Another brother, Patrick Moran, a private in the 
5th Michigan Infantry, who was wounded and taken 
at the Weldon Railroad, Va,, was in the Salisbury 
prison when the attempt to force the guard was made. 
He was released the same day as the writer, March 
1st, 1865. at Wilmington, and the fearful exposures 
through which he had passed soon hurried him to his 
grave. 



88 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

In a speech delivered in Congress a few years 
ago Mr. Blaine declared the responsibility of Jeffer- 
son Davis in these words: 

"Mr. Davis was the author, knowingly, delib- 
erately, guiltily and wilfully, of the gigantic murder 
and crime of Andersonville ; and I here before God, 
measuring my words, knowing their full extent and 
import, declare that neither the deeds of the Duke 
of Alva in the Low Countries, nor the massacre of 
Saint Bartholomew, nor the thumbscrews and en- 
gines of torture of the Spanish Inquisition begin 
to compare in atrocity with the hideous crimes 
of Andersonville." 

These words were either true or they were atro- 
cious. They were certainly the utterance of a man 
who had closely read and studied all attainable evi- 
dence on the subject; and they were declared from 
a pviblic prominence that challenged the attention of 
the world a generation after the war. 

Mr. Davis, commenting on Mr. Blaine's speech, 
took his customary refuge behind " his people," and 
instead of making the full and specific denial which 
conscious innocence would have eagerly sought, and 
which his assailed honor demanded both for himself 
and for the South, he sought content in an undig- 
nified and whining letter to a friend in Congress, 



''IN THE WHITEST HEAT OF THE WAR." 89 

who, stung by the lance of Mr. Bhiine, implored 
Davis to defend himself. The appeal was as vain as 
the entreated performance was impossible. In the 
few feeble sentences of a letter which his friend un- 
wisely published, he reiterated the faded and only 
excuse he has foolishly fondled to the end, namely: 
That the dreadful accusations of Mr. Blaine and of 
others equally emphatic were merely partisan attacks 
upon the Southern people, " bij ivhose authorify and 
in whose behalf,'''' he says, "■my deeds icere done.'''' 
That he should have ventured even in the dismay of 
defeat to seek so false and ignoble a refuge as this 
displays the amazing estimate he put upon the 
patience of the Southern people, who are thus 
dragooned into an endorsement of the hideous 
iniquity of Andersonville. 

No tongue or pen in the North, in the whitest 
heat of the war, ever pronounced upon the Southern 
people or the Southern army a libel so gross and 
groundless as this of the man to whom they had 
entrusted their honor and their cause. The spec- 
tacle of this base effort to escape the penalty of his 
offenses will dignify by comparison the female attire 
in which he sought to elude his captors in Georgia 
— the grotesque act that closed his public career. 



90 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

An enlightened world can never be made believe 
that the generous and braye people of the South ever 
authorized or approved such infamy as starving and 
freezing to death their Northern countrymen whom 
their soldiers had taken in honorable battle. No, 
it was not the South that invented and superintended 
such counterfeits of hell as Andersonville, Salisbury 
and Belle Isle. Not the Southern soldiers who broke 
Grant's stubborn lines at Shiloh when Albert Sidney 
Johnston fell. Not the veterans who died with " Pat" 
Clerbourne and Bishop Polk. Not the "foot cavalry " 
in whose van Stonewall Jackson fell at Chancellors- 
ville, and who followed Ewell to the Susquehanna in 
'G3. Nor yet the bronzed men of Pickett who bore 
the torn cross of the South with Armsted over the 
dismantled and smoking guns of Cashing to the 
Rebellion's high-water mark at Gettysburg. 

No! It was none of these who left the shame- 
ful blight of Andersonville upon our history, and 
not for these that the survivors of Southern prisons 
or the Northern people have reproaches. That 
crime was hatched by men of different mould, and 
the agents for its execution were tools and underliugs 
of more ignoble caste. The men whom Jefferson 
Davis selected to consummate the atrocious deed 
were chosen after mature deliberation. They were 



''FOR DEEDS THAT SOLDIERS SCORN." 91 

men ivhom he intimately knew, aud whom nature bad 
coined and habits prepared for deeds that soldiers 
scorn. They were the Winders and the Turners, 
miscreants like Wirz, and thugs like Northrop and 
Gee — men who covered under the mask of a sol- 
dier's uniform the instincts and infamy of assassins ; 
men who never in prayer sought mercy of God and 
never in deed gave mercy to man. 

In these progressive and tranquil days Avhen a 
new generation sees the roses of peace climbing over 
the broken cannon of the war, it would seem impos- 
sible for the mind to imbibe the belief that a plot so- 
diabolical and revolting in extent and detail could 
have been conceived by enlightened Americans, and 
agents found for its execution, were it not that the 
finger of history points out to us the graveyards of 
the past, and the names of men who, impelled by the 
unholy lust for power and lured by the ignis-fatuus 
of ambition, have gone down with red dripping hands 
in the maelstrom of ruin and death — men who, to 
attain supremacy over tribe or nation, were ready 

"To wade through slaughter to a throne, 
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind." 

In the month of August, 1887, the International 
Medical Congress met in Washington for an inter- 
change of counsel, and all information tending to 



92 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

advance the beneficent interests and objects of med- 
ical science. Among the most interesting matters 
presented for pathological study in this congress was 
the authenticated fact that, great as was the aggre- 
gate in casualties among the Union troops in the 
field during the rebellion, it did not exceed in battle 
two per cent, in the whole four years; whereas the 
death-rate among the Union prisoners at Anderson- 
ville was proven to be tivcniy-four per cent, in seven 
monilis. 

Can rhetoric exaggerate the inhuman treatment 
of Union captives which these figures presented by 
the combined medical talent of America and Europe 
reveal ? And will any sane person assert that a state- 
ment like this, made by a congress like this, twenty- 
two years after the war closed, was the utterance of 
irresponsible partisans to foment sectional discord, 
and to "-fire the Northern heart!'''' 

At Salisbury even this was eclipsed; for there, 
out of ten thousand prisoners admitted to the prison 
from September, 1SG4, to February, 18G5 (five 
months), five thousand died, or fifty j^er cent! 

Every survivor of those pens of pestilence and 
systematic murder, and every representative in Con- 
gress from the North who has dared to publicly 
reveal and honestly denounce the matchless iniquities 



"■BLED IN FIELD AND STARVED IN DUNGEON" 93 

of Southern prisons, has been fiercely maligned and 
falsely misjudged for a quarter of a century by 
Jefferson Davis and liis echoing essayists of the brand 
of Stevenson, v/hom he selected with the \yinders to 
preside over the medical features of the Anderson - 
ville syston. Nor does the writer of this fragment 
of prison history expect or crave any different treat- 
ment at their hands than that of his comrades and 
countrymen. He and they, having done their humble 
share in the preservation of this Union in field and 
dungeon during four of the bitterest and bloodiest 
years of its existence, have a right to insist that the 
true history o£ the war in all its phases shall be 
fully, fairly, and fearlessly written; that the record 
shall stand inviolate and neither be distorted nor 
expunged to suit sectional tastes or political expe- 
diency. 

It should not only be the privilege but the 
duty of our soldiers to relate their experiences, 
while among us, and thus furnish the warp from which 
future years may weave the enduring fabric of his- 
tory. Heaven forbid, then, that ever in our country, 
from the Virginias to the Dakotas, the soldiers who 
bled in field and starved in dungeon for their com- 
mon preservation shall be denied the right to publicly 
tell the story of their campaigns or captivity. And 



94 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

Heaven forbid that ever in this Republic a mighty 
crime shall be condoned, much less dignified, because 
of the eminence of the criminal. 

More than a century ago Snrajah Dowlah, a vice- 
roy of India, besieged and captured the little English 
colony of Fort William at Calcutta, in Bengal; and 
having robbed his prisoners, he promised to spare 
their lives, but turned them over to the mercy of the 
guards, who drove one hundred and forty-six of them 
into a one-story brick structure about fifteen feet in 
height, and having an interior ground space about 
twenty square feet with narrow and iron-barred 
apertures near the eaves of the roof. Forced into 
this dungeon at the point of the bayonet, the heavy 
door was closed and bolted upon the victims, on a 
mid-summer night, "when" — says Macaulay — "life 
in Southern India is only made endurable to Euro- 
peans by high ceilings, and moving fans." The hor- 
rors of that night as the strongest fought fiercely 
for places near the small openings through which the 
merciless guards mocked the shrieking victims by 
sprinkling drops of water through the gratings, was 
beyond the descriptive genius of the greatest of 
historians. 

When morning at last came and their agonizing 
cries grew fainter, and at last ceased, the door was 



" UNION PRISONEBS WHO FROZE TO DEATH:' 95 

opened and twenty-three ghostly and speechless 
victims staggered into the air. A lane was made, 
and one hundred and twenty-three dead bodies on 
which decomposition had already made rapid and 
loathsome progress were carried out. A pit was 
dug, the victims thrown into it in a ghastly heap 
and covered from sight. 

History has recorded how the tragedy shocked 
all Christendom, and how relentlessly and terribly 
the crime was avenged by the English. And thus 
for more than a century the "Black Hole of Cal- 
cutta " has stood in every Christian land as the sym- 
bol of all that was barbarous in warfare. But its 
author was a debauched, superstitious and benighted 
savage of India, to whom the infliction of pain upon 
man and beast had from his childhood afforded the 
keenest pleasure, and who was subject to no rule but 
that of his savage passions. The dreadful cruelty in 
this instance was confined at least to a few agonizing 
hours, and cost one hundred and twenty-three lives 
— the exact number of Union prisoners who /ro2:e to 
death at Belle Isle, The savage Hindoo could not 
but see in his captives the representatives of power- 
ful foreign foes whom he had from early youth been 
taught to hate with all the fierceness of his nature 
and recognize as the conquerors and oppressors ot 



96 BASTJLES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

his race. How much there was of reason to inflame 
his malevolence against the English invaders who 
were enriching themselves out of the resources of 
his country was many years later revealed at the trial 
of Y/arren Hastings in Sheridan's greatest speech 
and in the superb eloquence of Edmund Burke. 

But Anderson ville was a place where all the 
conceivable horrors of hades were concentrated and 
revelled in for thirteen months, and caused the death 
of nearly fourteen thousand men and practically dis- 
abled for life a large majority of its survivors. Its 
responsible author was an enlightened American, 
educated in the highest military school of the coun- 
try, and at its expense; and the victims were his own 
countrymen. He wore the garb and external de- 
meanor of a Christian gentleman, and on each Sab- 
bath he went with sober steps into the house of 
worship to listen to the psalms; and with the guilty 
knowledge of Andersonville in his heart he listened 
with bowed head to the Lord's Prayer, and heard 
unmoved the sweet lessons of charity taught by the 
Prince of Peace. And now, at the age of four-score 
years, he seeks with bold falsehood and ingenious 
sophistry to cover his mighty offenses from the view 
of his countrymen and claim a patriot's laurels from 
mankind. 



''THOSE WHO DIED MIGHT HAVE BEEN SAVED.'' 97 

When the condition of Andersonville, Salisbury 
and other prisons was minutely and accurately 
reported to "the President" by Confederate phy- 
sicians and officers who were specially sent there to 
investigate them; when Catholic bishops and priests 
confirmed the shocking story of inhumanity; when 
the newspapers throughout the Confederacy were 
sounding the warning to Kichmond in the boldest 
terms ; when citizens and reputable Confederate com- 
manders were writing letters of entreaty to Jefferson 
Davis to spare the South from the shame of utter 
barbarity, and when the dead-carts were gathering 
each morning from the ground a hundred corpses at 
Andersonville and at Salisbury, a telegraph v/ire 
connected the gates of those pens, and more than 
twelve counterparts of them, with the sumptuous 
home in Richmond in which he dined and slept! 

" I feel myself safe in saying," says the Con- 
federate Doctor John C. Bates in his testimony, 
" that at least seventij-Jive i^er cent, of tJiose who died 
might have been saved, had those unfortunate men 
been lyroperhj cared for as to food, clothing, bedding, 
etc.'''' 

Colonel D. T. Chandler, Inspector General of the 
Confederacy, who spent a week of investigation at 
Andersonville, uses these words in his testimony: 



98 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

"I also urged on the department tlie removal of 
General AYinder as the radical cause of many of the 
difficulties there. I believe that with another head 
of the establishment a good deal might have been 
done. He had not the inclination to exert himself. 
I also urged the removal of the assistant commis- 
sary." 

To the remonstrances of Colonel Chandler and 
his assistant, Major Hall, concerning the fearful 
condition of the prisoners, with the sickly season 
near, Winder replied with brutal blasphemy that he 
" considered it better that hcdf of them shoidd die 
than take care of tJie men.''^ 

These humane Confederate officers, not being in 
the dastardly plot, and yet unsuspecting its existence, 
never doubted that when their reports of the con- 
dition of things at the prison were read in Richmond, 
a speedy remedy would follow, and insure the early 
appointment of a competent and humane successor to 
John H. Winder. But the efPect of their reports, 
and the reports of Professor Jones and Dr. Bates as 
well, after being maturely considered at Eichmond, 
enlightened and astounded them, and when soon 
after they read the announcement in General Orders, 
that John H. Winder, whom they deemed unfit to 
have charge of the Andersonville prison, was 



''WILL KILL MORE YANKEES." 99 

" hereby constituted Commissary General of all ihe 
milHary jjrisous in ihe CoH/cc/crac?/," they learned 
with honest dismay and mortification what special 
qualities constituted "competency" in a jailer for 
Union prisoners, according to the Piichmond lexicon, 
and what line of treatment harmonized with the 
"system" whose operations, as now fully and 
authoritatively ascertained, would soon verify the 
prophetic words of Winder to Ambrose Spencer a 
few days before Christmas in 1863: "J am going to 

build a 2^cn here that will kill move d d Yankees 

than can he destroijed at ihe front!'''' 

That this was no idle boast, let the graves of 
thirteen thousand seven hundred and five martyrs 
who sleep at Andersonville bear their mute but 
eloquent testimony. Let crippled and disease-racked 
survivors of Winder's Temple of Death attest the 
ingenuity of the architect as they meekly limp to the 
pension office, there to be denied a pittance from the 
overflowing treasury of their country, because they 
have no "hospital record," and their comrades and 
witnesses are dead at Andersonville! The record 
of a Union prisoner at Andersonville, Florence, or 
Salisbury, under John H. Winder's rule, was as 
laconic as Caesar's dispatch, " Fern, Vidi, Vici,'''' and 
was summed up in three words: ^'Stockade, Hos- 
piial, Jemeiery.'''' 



100 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

The writer of these pages ventures respectfully 
to invite the considerate attention of the Senators 
and Representatives in Congress and of his Excel- 
lency the President of the United States to this long- 
standing defect and injustice in the operation of 
existing pension laws in the cases of this class of 
Union soldiers. 



CHAPTEK VI. 

F'ederal Prisoners under Fire of Union 
Batteries— Causeless Shooting- 
Colonel Rose*s Tunnel. 

I HE writer was among the six hundred Union 
//-v officers who were removed from the stockade 
^^ at Macon and taken to Charleston, and there 
placed under fire of the Union batteries on Morris 
Island, from July, 1864 to October, when all were 
removed to Columbia. 

At Charleston the Union officers were confined 
in the jail, workhouse. Marine and Eoper Hospitals, 
all of which were adjacent to each other and at the 
margin of the "burnt district." An equal number of 
officers from the Macon prison were at the same time 
held at Savannah. 

Although the placing of these officers under fire 
of their own guns was clearly an infraction of the 
laws of war, it resulted in no serious consequences, 
as General Gilmore was kept thoroughly posted as to 
the location of the prisoners and regulated the direc- 
tion of his fire accordingly. The Confederates made 



102 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

eager and constant efforts to discover tlie source of 
Gilixiore's secret information, but all their search and 
vigilance -failed. 

It is a pleasant satisfaction as well as a duty to 
record the fact that in none of the six prisons in 
which the writer was held during a year and eight 
months were the prisoners so well housed, fed, and 
humanely treated as in the city of Charleston. The 
prisoners who were confined there in the summer 
and autumn of 1804 will bear united and willing 
testimony to the soldierly treatment received from 
the officers and men of the 32d Georgia regiment 
that constituted their guard there. 

Another incident will be gratefully treasured in 
memory: the noble Christian benevolence of the 
Sisters of Charity who often, in disregard of burst- 
ing shells, entered like ministering angels, bearing 
bread and tobacco to the captives and delicacies to 
the sick. Among the deplorable accidents of the 
firing upon the city was the destruction by fire of the 
convent of these noble ministers of mercy, and the 
generous appropriation for its re-establishment made 
by Congress subsequently was actively furthered and 
applauded by the Union recipients of their unselfish 
and sweet charity. 



''SHARED THEIR LAST FEW BISCUITS:' 103 

The writer will not permit this opportunity to 
pass without testifying his fervent gratitude for 
numerous kindnesses extended him in the Marine 
Hospital by Mrs. Hart and her little daughter 
Fannie, whose home was near by. It is indeed a 
pleasant duty to record amid all the cruelties and 
sufferings he witnessed such gentle and welcome 
deeds of kindness. He gratefully recalls the fact 
that the remnants of Pickett's Division, who guarded 
for a time the Federal prisoners taken with him at 
Gettysburg, stood guard over the captives a few hours 
after their famous and fatal charge, shared their last 
few biscuits with them in the retreat, uttered no un- 
civil word, but bore themselves as nobly with their 
prisoners as they had bravely with their armed foes. 
In one of the writer's escapes' from Charlotte, 
N. C, in February, 1805, after tramping the swamps 
for many days and nights without food or warmth, 
with a few thin and tattered rags clinging to his 
emaciated frame and with shoeless, torn and frozen 
feet, he fell into the hands of a squad of Confeder- 
ates about two o'clock in the morning. They took 
him to the house of Dr. Sidney A. Johnston, a rela- 
tive of General Albert Sidney Johnston, where he was 
guarded until the next day. Dr. Johnston and his 
family, although ardently devoted to the cause of the 



104 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

Confederacy, were typical Southerners with whom 
hospitality was a religion. They prepared a meal 
which, although it did not include the luxury of 
coffee or tea, pi'ovided an abundance of good milk 
and substantial hot edibles to which the writer's 
starved stomach had been a stranger for the greater 
part of two years. After a warm and refreshing bath 
for his swollen and lacerated feet, a good bed with a 
real pillow was made for him before a cheerful log 
fire, and he soon forgot the misfortune of his fifth 
recapture in the Confederacy in blessed sleep. 

The guards were mounted men who had seen 
active service, and the sergeant in charge, seeing 
that the writer could not walk with his bare and 
swollen feet over the frost-covered ground without 
extreme pain, and not having an extra horse, gener- 
ously dismounted and gave his prisoner his horse; 
and although suffering himself from an unhealed 
wound, he allowed the writer to ride, and walked 
beside him in the road to the railroad station (where 
he was obliged to deliver him toother guards), a dis- 
tance of about twelve miles. The writer regrets that 
he has forgotten the name of this chivalrous soldier, 
but gratefully remembers his deed. That man would 
never have suited John H. Winder. 



''UTTERLY CAUSELESS SHOOTING." 105 

The promiscuous and utterly causeless shooting 
of Union prisoners already referred to was practiced 
in all the main prisons, and the list of the slain and 
maimed victims would make a startling and ghastly 
chronicle of wanton cruelty. Of the very many in- 
stances of this species of murder that were personally 
witnessed by the writer during his captivity he does 
not recall one case of shooting for which there was 
the faintest shade of provocation. He has already 
referred to the murder of Lieutenant Turbain, which 
he witnessed at Camp Sorghum, near Columbia. 
Not less atrocious and unjustifiable was the killing 
of Lieutenant Otto Gerson of the 45th New York at 
Macon, Ga., which was also done in his presence. 

This brutal murder occurred in the early part of 
a sultry night. The writer, being ill with fever and 
suffering with keen thirst, started with his tin cup to 
the spring near the south end of the stockade. This 
spring, which supplied the camp with drinking water, 
was protected by a sunken barrel and was always 
accessible day and night to the prisoners, being a 
dozen feet or more inside the "dead-line" and fully 
twenty- five feet from the post of the nearest sentinel 
on the stockade, from which it Avas at all times in 
full view. As he approached within a few yards of 
the barrel he observed two or more prisoners, cup in 



106 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

hand, on tlie same errand, and one of these was just 
rising to his feet after getting a drink when the 
report of a musket rang out and the man, dropping 
his cup, fell with a groan to the ground. The writer 
with several others sprang to his side, and raising 
his head from the sand-bank was horrified to recog- 
nize in the victim Lieutenant Gerson, a brave and 
gentlemanly officer whom he knew. He was alive 
and conscious when we placed him in a blanket and 
bore him to shelter, but his hurt was fatal and he 
died after a few suffering hours. 

This brutal murder was deliberately committed 
by a sentinel on the stockade in idle sport to win a 
bet made with another sentinel beside him ; and in the 
hearing of the several officers who had preceded the 
writer to the spring, he had boasted that he "would 
shoot a Yankee before he slept." 

At Libby prison there was a standing order to 
the sentinels to shoot a head if seen at the 'windows, 
or at a hand if placed on the bars that secured them. 
Nor did they always wait for even this wretched 
justification, but frequently fired random shots into 
the windows in wanton and brutal mirth. In this 
manner Lieutenants Burns and Hammond were shot, 
utterly without cause, as were Lieutenants Huggins 
and Kiipp, and others. 






risr^Vn L 







Murder of Lieut. Gerson.— See page 106. 



''SHOT THROUGH THE HEAD:' 107 

The writer vividly recalls the sight of Captain 
Forsyth, of the 100th Ohio Infantry, lying dead in 
a pool of blood on the floor of the upper middle room 
in Libby, He was shot through the head while 
reading a newspaper, and fully eight to ten feet from 
the nearest window. In his narrative, "Col. Kose's 
Tunnel at Libby Prison," published in the Ceniury 
Magazine of March, 1888, the writer incidentally 
referred to this affair, denouncing it as an unpro- 
voked and wanton murder. The stricture brouglit 
forth a letter from a person claiming to have been 
one of the prison guards at the time, in which he 
avers that the shooting of Captain Forsyth was done 
by a man named Weber, and that the gun was dis- 
charged accidentally. If this is true — and it is pos- 
sible — the writer gladly hastens to give circulation 
to his defense, as he has neither motive nor wish to 
charge him with responsibility for the death of an 
unarmed and unoffending prisoner in his charge. 
He knows, however, that it was unanimously believed 
in Libby to have been wilfully done, and it is certain 
that the united call of the Federal officers for a 
satisfactory explanation of the killing was at the time 
treated by Major Thomas P. Turner, the commandant, 
with silent disdain. If there was an investigation 
that exonerated Mr. Weber, it was not authoritatively 



108 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

announced to the officers; yet it is decidedly to the 
credit of the unfortunate Confederate soldier that he 
remembers and regrets the sad incident that cost a 
noble young life and inexpressibly pained all our 
hearts in Libby Prison. 

The prisoners being confined in the two upper 
lofts of the building, the order forbidding them to 
approach the iron-bound windows was as needless as 
it was brutal. Twelve hundred men were for long 
and terrible months smothering in the six rooms 
whose aggregate area gave each of them a space of 
less than five square feet; and when a new batch of 
prisoners arrived, the older ones were kept busy in 
preventing the newcomers from going to the 
windows, where the sentinels were watching for a 
shot at the sufferer who, unaware of his peril, sought 
a breath of fresh air at them. 

During the month of August, 1863, the writer, 
who was ill, climbed through the scuttle to the roof 
many times at the risk of life, when, towards evening, 
the heat of the sun was somewhat diminished from 
the blistered roof, to escape for an hour the stifling 
atmosphere of the swarming rooms beneath; and, 
hiding behind the chimney from the sight of the 
prison sentinels or passing Confederates on Dock 
street, would wait in dread for the approaching 



''THE HOT HUMAN hive:' 109 

moment when he must leave the pure air and the 
sight of the sky to return to the hot human hive that 
sent up a burning stench through the opening that, 
to his fancy, seemed like a shaft that led to hell. 

A circumstance not wholly unlooked for soon 
ended these visits to the roof. AVhile resting his 
head against the chimney one afternoon, a runaway 
horse tearing down along the canal near the prison 
brought him instinctively to his feet for a fuller view 
of the frightened animal. A sentinel, who had 
evidently been informed by some one of the writer's 
position, had left his post, and from the sidewalk 
east of the prison took aim and fired. The bullet 
flattened itself against the chimney and uncomfort- 
ably near the head of its intended victim, who 
dropped as quickly to the roof as though the shot 
had succeeded. In cautiously rising, his hand 
rested on the third of a detached brick which, 
together with the danger he had escaped by a hair, 
and with the recollection of a long series of bitter 
wrongs crowding upon him, instinctively reminded 
him that he had an enemy in sight and a weapon in 
his hand. The enemy was loading his gun for a 
second shot, and meantime had been joined by two 
other soldiers without arms, and a citizen. He was 
about to ram home his cartridge when a cry of 



110 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

"Look out!" startled liira. The alarm came near 
being late, for that brick descended Avith a speed that 
would have done credit to a crack baseball pitcher, 
as it grazed his head, knocking the ramrod from his 
hand. In his fright he dropped the gun, as he saw 
his Yankee assailant detaching another brick; the 
panic-stricken quartet in their haste sprang for 
shelter, but the lack of any organized plan and 
mutual understanding embarassed them visibly, for 
they fell in a tangled heap; and as the writer hastily 
left for the scuttle, he was gratified to see the citizen 
on top of the animated pyramid. 

This little incident supplied the guards of the 
prison with mirth for several days, in which the 
shooter did not join with any perceptible enthusiasm. 
He appeared with the guards in the morning in the 
rooms of the prison at roll call, and if his sulphurous 
observations, as he eagerly sought through the ranks 
of the Yankees "for the man that threw that brick," 
were such as could be decorously printed, they would 
be cheerfully inserted in his behalf. Thus ended 
the stolen visits of the writer to the roof of Libby. 

The frequency with which the guards fired into 
the windows renders it amazing that more men were 
not killed; and that the casualties were not greater 
was possibly due to the fact that by the time a man 



''TOOK A GOOD MARKSMAN TO HIT HIM:' HI 

had lived a few months on the prison rations he was 
so reduced in physique that it took a good marksman 
to hit him. 

"Indignation," remarked a sufferer, "is the only- 
thing the Confederacy ever filled a prisoner with." 
There was indeed an exception, and one so remarka- 
ble as to call for special mention. It was in the 
person of a German captain of a New York Cavalry 
regiment, who had been captured in 1863. This 
officer was a very giant in stature and must have 
weighed fully three hundred pounds. His coming 
was an event among the prisoners at Libby, and pro- 
voked some witticisms in the newspapers as well as 
some variegated personal remarks among the mob 
that followed him through the streets to the prison 
door. He was an excellent officer by repute, and an 
intelligent and sedate German gentleman who 
deserved and enjoyed the cordial esteem of his fellow 
prisoners. Although his means and mode of life 
had accustomed him to generous living, he adapted 
himself bravely to circumstances and subsisted 
patiently on the scant daily ration of coarse cornbread 
with which in happier days at home he would have 
scorned to affront his dog. Nor was this all. To 
the unspeakable amazement of everybody in Libby 
he not only maintained his huge avoirdupois, but 



112 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

orew faff €7' daily! The phenomena excited the 
prison and was the theme of eager and even heated 
debate among envious and attenuated rivals. The 
Federal doctors in Libby lectured on and about him, 
and the Confederates pointed with pride to him ( when 
an investigating committee of the Southern Congress 
visited us) as a stupendous refutation of the "Lin- 
coln lie" that the Yankee prisoners were being 
starved by the Confederacy. He immortalized him- 
self and gave a crowning surprise to his friends and 
foes by escaping through the famous tunnel dug by 
Colonel Kose and his party in February, 18G4.* 

The writer, who escaped through that hole, 
which was fifty- seven feet long, was several times 
wedged fast in it, although then of slight physique, 
and regards it as au impenetrable mystery how his 
big German comrade ever made the passage through 
that narrow, long, horrible grave! Nor did he suc- 
ceed without a heroic and supreme effort, for the 
writer vividly remembers how the big man got fast 
in the middle of the tunnel that night and delayed 
him, among others, for nearly an hour in the midst 
of a frenzied mob of prisoners struggling fiercely to 

*An illustrated narrative of this remarkable plot and 
escape, written by the author, a(>peared in the Century Magazine 
for March, 1888. 



"FREED HIM FROM THE VISE OF DEATH." 113 

be next, and who, learning the cause of the delay — 
every minute seeming an hour — hurled curses on 
the blockaded German's head, or rather stomach. A 
supreme struggle freed him from the vise of death 
and he was soon panting and perspiring in the sweet 
open air of a winter night outside the old Bastile. 

It is a pleasure to record the fact that he suc- 
ceeded in bringing his entire person safely into 
General Butler's camp on the Peninsula, although 
the brave projector of the plot was, like the writer, 
retaken in sight of the Union troops. 

It is related that a Representative in Congress 
from the "Hoosier State," speaking with Mr. Lincoln 
afterwards about the famous escape, told the Presi- 
dent that he was one of the one hundred and nine 
officers who had passed through the tunnel. To 
which Mr. Lincoln replied, that while the escape 
had interested and gratified him, it did not in his 
particular case surprise him at all; "For," said the 
homely and lamented prince of wits, "}???/ experience 
m politics convinced me long since that there never 
ivas a hole so small in the Confederacy, nor in Wasli- 
ington either, tJicd an Indiana Congressman couldnH 
crawl through it.'''' 

When prisoners first entered Libby they were 
relieved of all their money and valuables. There 



114 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

was, indeed, some pretense of keeping a record of 
the sums taken and of the names of the owners, and 
in cases where the amount was considerable, small 
sums were at fixed intervals returned to the owners, 
in Confederate money, and at such rates of exchange 
as the whim of the keepers determined (as a matter 
of fact a comparative few ever saw either their green- 
backs again or their Confederate equivalent), and 
even this soon went in purchases of extra articles of 
food through Turner's assistants at enormous prices. 
Not a third of the current premium on United States 
greenbacks was allowed to the robbed captives, who 
in a constant state of semi-starvation took "Hobson's 
choice" and bought and devoured their extra bread. 

"Time was," said a newspaper wit of Richmond 
at the time, commenting on the depreciated and 
despised "scrip" of the Confederacy, "when we went 
merrily to market with our money in our purse and 
brought home our provisions in a flowing basket; 
but lo, the change! Our wife now totes our money 
to the dismal ruin of the provision temple and 
meekly returns home with her market purchases in 
our pocketbook." 

When the brutalities at Libby and Belle Isle 
were scandalizing the self-respecting people of the 
South as well as their soldiers in the field, Henry S. 



''PROTESTED AGAINST THE INIQUITY:' 115 

Foote, a venerable member of the Confederate Con- 
gress, who had earned the implacable enmity of Jef- 
ferson Davis once by defeating him in a memorable 
political campaign in Mississippi, boldly denounced 
and solemnly protested against the iniquity that was 
shaming the South. So fiercely was his protest 
resented by the subservient tools of Davis in Con- 
gress that his life was threatened, and finding him- 
self powerless to avert the impending shame, he fled 
to the Union camps. 

The writer saw a Union officer passing bits of 
bread through a hole in the floor in Libby to a lot of 
starving men in the room beneath, who scrambled 
for the falling crumbs like famished wolves. An 
unobserved guard below watched his chance and 
plunged his bayonet with a savage thrust into the 
floor an inch from the generous giver's hand. 

An order forbade the spreading of a blanket on 
the floor of the prison in day time, and the rooms 
being entirely bare of bunks or seats, the men sat fti 
the floor, resting their backs against the walls or 
supporting-posts, or moved about for such exercise 
as the crowded pen would allow. A newly arrived 
prisoner, too ill to stand on his feet and as yet ignor- 
ant of the rule referred to, spread his ragged blanket 
on the floor to ease his aching limbs. He had 



116 BASTILES OF THE VONFEDERACY. 

scarcely laid down when Dick Turner entered from 
the adjoining room and, seizing the blanket behind 
the prostrate sufferer, kicked him twice with brutal 
force in the middle of the back, and dragging the 
blanket from under the fainting victim bore it away 
and "confiscated" it. 

Some wounded and sick men were one day 
brought in a wagon to the door of the prison hospital 
room on the ground floor of Libby. The writer 
ventured near the window above to see the men 
taken from the wagon into the room beneath, and 
one emaciated man, thinking he could walk unas- 
sisted into the hospital, climbed from the wagon, and 
in the attempt to walk across the cobble-stone pave- 
ment fell from weakness full length upon his face. 
Dick Turner, who was standing by, seized the fallen 
and bleeding invalid by the collar, and dragging him 
violently to his fget, kicked him brutally several 
times and flung him with his full strength into tlie 
Ifospital room — from whence next day his dead body 
was borne out for burial. 

A squad of prisoners were passing the prison 
one day, among whom Colonel Ely, of the 18th Con- 
necticut — a Libby prisoner — recognized a sergeant of 
his regiment. He had the good fortune a few days 
before to get a box from home containing, with other 



''BLOW UP THE TWELVE HUNDRED." 117 

things, a small ham. Knowing well that his less 
fortunate comrade was very nearly starved, he gen- 
erously threw the ham to him. The man ran eagerly 
to catch the prize, when a guard, raising his gun and 
threatening to shoot him if he moved, deliberately 
picked up the ham and bore it away in great glee 
that was heartily enjoyed by Turner, who stood by 
and witnessed the mean and cowardly act. 

Cruelty was this man's pastime, and probably 
his greatest life disappointment was that the 
fortuitous circumstance of Colonel Dahlgren's death 
deprived him of the crowning pleasure of his career, 
namely: to explode the powder mine under Libby 
and blow up the twelve hundred Union inmates the 
moment the hoofs of Dahlgren's approaching cavalry 
should be heard in the streets of Richmond. "The 
minute Dahlgren got into this y'her town," said this 
disciple of Winder and Wirz, speaking of the affair 
to a Union officer afterwards, "I would have blown 
every one of you Yankees to h — 1." 

There was one lonesome trait about this man 
Turner that mitigates and softens in some measure 
the remembrance of his offenses. There was no 
vacancy in his nature for hypocrisy ; his daily deeds 
of brutality were done with open and scrupulous 
honesty, and the long record of his infamy was an 



118 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

open book to which he pointed with pride. " He 
knew what he was there for," and he never shirked 
his duty simply because he was drunk; if he had, his 
face would not have been familiar around Libby. 
He loved whisky, it is true, but he would not desert 
the j^risoners. He did not embroider his cruelties 
wutli the stately phrases and fine rhetoric of his 
responsible employer at the Executive Mansion; his 
blows were brutal, but his was not "the hand of 
steel under the glove of velvet." He was a civilian, 
and to his credit be it said, he scorned to mask his 
real trade under the uniform of a soldier. When he 
locked the writer up in an underground cell, without 
light, food or fire in the cold of February, 18G-1, with 
thirty-three others crowded in a space twelve feet 
square, for escaping through the tunnel, and when 
he was told by an officer that the writer would 
probably die one terrible night, he replied with 

perfect and unaffected candor: " Well, d n him, 

let him die; thafs what he's here for.'''' But though 
a sick man, he refused to die ; and not only lived to 
make four more escapes, but saw the hour arrive 
when Turner was himself an inmate of that cell, and 
his master a fugitive. 

By the irony of fate, the famous Bastile around 
which cluster so many sad memories of the war has 



^^ AFTER THE LAPSE OF A GENERATION- ng 

itself travelled from its old home on the banks of the 
James, and now, after the lapse of a generation, 
attracts the curious tourist and the patriotic visitor 
on the shore of Lake Michigan. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Dahl^ren's Raid and the Libby Powder- 
Mine. 

WHEN, at the end of the war, the details of 
the dastardly plot to blow up Libby 
Prison, with its twelve hundred Union 
inmates, at the time of the Dahlgren raid in Feb- 
ruary, 1864, were revealed in the secret documents 
captured among the Confederate archives, compara- 
tively few people in the North seriously believed that 
there were men in authority at Richmond who ever 
really meditated the slaughter, until every desperate 
device for concealment had failed, and the actors in 
the plot were forced to the shameful confession. 

In his work, "The Lost Cause," Pollard refers 
freely to the affair, and boldly defends the villainy. 
Both he and Jefferson Davis quote the excuse for 
its intended consummation made secretly by a com- 
mittee of the Confederate Congress. In this com- 
mittee's report, after reciting the impending danger 
of Dahlgren's entrance to the city and the conse- 
quences to ensue in the release of the Federal pris- 

120 



"A MINE WAS prepared:' 121 

oners, these terms are used: "^ mine teas iDrepared 
under Lihhy Prison, and a siifficieut qnantiiy of 
gunpowder ivas placed therein, and care teas taken 
to inform the prisoners that any cdtempt on their 
part to escape ivoidd he effectually defecdedy 

The conduct of this famous raid, one of the 
most remarkable and daring during the war, was 
entrusted to two men whose intrepid courage had 
been proven by the highest tests in battle — General 
Kilpatrick, the chief in command, leading one column 
of cavalry, and Colonel Ulric Dahlgren, a son of the 
Admiral, the other. While the former moved rapidly 
on Kichmond, approaching it from the north, the 
latter contemplated crossing the James river with 
his smaller column above Kichmond, and, sweeping 
down its south bank, release the prisoners at Belle 
Isle, cross to Richmond from Manchester, liberate 
the prisoners at Libby and other buildings, and 
moving rapidly unite with Kilpatrick's forces on the 
Peninsula. 

But Dahlgren was fatally misinformed by the 
negro guide, and the attempted crossing at Mannakin 
Town being found impossible, his situation with so 
small a force became one of great peril, as the 
change of plan thus forced upon him rendered the 
junction with Kilpatrick both difficult and haz- 



122 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

ardous. After several sharp encounters witli the 
enemy in the suburbs of Richmond, he decided to 
join the main column, and made a rapid detour 
around the defenses that skirted the city on the 
north and toward the Chickahominy. While riding 
at the head of his little band through the darkness, 
about midnight of the 2d of March, he was passing 
along a narrow road leading through a dense and 
dismal wood, when suddenly he was startled by the 
rustle of leaves and crackling twigs a few feet in 
advance. His hand quickly sought his pistol, but 
before he could draw it upon his foes, or even see 
them, a quick cry rang through the woods on the 
flank of his column; the flash of a volley lit the 
scene for an instant, and the youthful leader fell 
dead from his saddle to the road, pierced by four 
bullets fired from the distance of a few yards, and 
from flank and rear. A few only of his men escaped, 
in the pitch darkness, from the fatal ambush. The 
rest were killed, wounded or captured. 

The pockets of the dead leader were rifled, and 
his watch, together with a pocket-wallet containing a 
few cigars and some papers, were taken by a young 
home-guard named Littlepage; he handed them to 
his lieutenant, who returned the cigars but retained 
the papers. It was yet dark, but the identity of 




'Death of Ulric Dahlgren."— See page 122. 



"BRUTALLY HACKED off:' 123 

Dahlgren was revealed by the lad's mentioning that 
the dead man wore an artificial leg; whereupon a 
recaptured Confederate officer exclaimed: "It is 
Colonel Dahlgren!" The false limb was rudely 
wrenched from the body, and a finger on which the 
leader wore a plain gold ring, the memorial of a 
beloved and dead sister, was brutally hacked off for 
its prize. The savagery was continued until the 
mutilated body of the dead and dreaded leader was 
stripped of nearly all its clothing, then carted to 
Eichmond and for several days lay in the open part 
of a railroad depot, exposed to the view and coarse 
jibes of an idle mob attracted from the corners and 
slums of the city. When the piteous spectacle had 
been sufficiently enjoyed by the rabble, the mangled 
remains were taken in the night to a lonely s]3ot by 
a chosen party and secretly buried. 

While these atrocities were being perpetrated, 
the wallet found in Dahlgren's pocket was playing 
an interesting part in this drama. Its contents were 
borne to Richmond by Lieutenant Pollard and given 
into the hands of a Eichmond editor who was, it is 
understood, a relative. Through what hands those 
papers passed thereafter has been religiously con- 
cealed, and the matter must be left to conjecture; 
but it is certain that a true history of their mutations 



124 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY, 

embraces a bold forgery that was designed to fix the 
brand of a would-be assassin upon Colonel Ulric 
Dahlgren, whose lips were now sealed in death, and 
thus seek some shred of justification both for the 
shameful mutilation and insult to his remains, the 
inhuman treatment of his captured officers and men, 
and for the meditated crowning infamy of blowing 
up Libby Prison, then swarming with twelve hundred 
Union officers. 

The tidings of the approach of two such leaders 
as Kilpatrick and Dahlgren at a time when Rich- 
mond was stripped of veteran troops and defended 
chiefly by untried home-guards caused the utmost 
dismay, and Mr. Davis, his cabinet and the city 
authorities were seized with a contagion of fright 
bordering on convulsions. But fortuitous circum- 
stances already narrated frustrated the daring and 
noble mission of the expedition. Dahlgren was dead 
and the match was not applied to the Libby Prison 
mine. The danger passed, and with the return of 
cooler reasoning power that the soothing sense of 
safety restored to Mr. Davis and his intimate advisers, 
some sense of responsibility for the iniquitous steps 
that had been taken in the haste and fierce resent- 
ment that succeeded fear began to dawn upon them 
all. 



"AND A TOOL WAS FOUND." 125 

It would now be necessary to put forth a justi- 
fying cause for an extraordinary and unprecedented 
act that would satisfy the chivalrous people of the 
South and the conscience of an enlightened world, 
and not utterly paralyze their industrious ambassa- 
dors then abroad seeking in lobby and court the 
recognition of the Confederacy. A hint from the 
masters was enough, and a tool was found. 

In Dahlgren's wallet was found some unused 
sheets of paper bearing the printed letter-heading 
of the Union Calvary Corps — a custom with com- 
manders — and^ enough written memoranda in other 
unimportant papers to show the general characteris- 
tics of his handwriting. On one of these sheets the 
confidential penman produced a bogus order pur- 
porting to be addressed to Dahlgren's command, and 
announcing the objects of the expedition, one of 
which was to be the liberation of the Union prisoners 
at Libby and Belle Isle, and the other to "6«/rw fJic 
hateful city and see that Davis and his traitorous 
crew does not escape.'''' By this it was to be under- 
stood Mr. Davis and his cabinet were to be killed or 
carried off as prisoners. 

To this production Dahlgren's name was signed 
and the forgery was speedily on its mission through 
the newspapers and to the country. Desperate and 



126 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

cunning efforts were now made to liusli up the min- 
ing of Libby and to impress upon the prisoners that 
the whole thing was an innocent stratagem to intimi- 
date them. Not until the fall of Richmond and the 
capture of the Confederate archives was the official 
acknowledgment of the Confederate Congressional 
Committee known to any one outside of Mr. Davis 
and those having close connection with the plot four- 
teen months before. 

"Your committee," concludes this remarkable 
document, "does not hesitate to make known the 
facts [the mining of the prison], feeling assured that 
the conscience of an enlightened world and the law 
of self-presej'vation will justify our country and her 
officers in all that has been done." 

It is, however, notably significant that the 
enlightened world was not taken into the confidence 
of the conspirators until the light was turned on by 
Union hands more than a year afterwards. Nor is 
it at all probable that the enlightened world would 
ever have heard of the Libby powder-mine, except 
as an unauthenticated war rumor, had it not been for 
the memorable dispatch of Lee from Petersburg, 
handed to Mr. Davis in church that Sunday 
morning, on April 2d, 1865, that drew his attention 
with such rude abruptness from his devotions to his 



''AWED AND KEPT DOWN." 127 

baggage, an episode described in Pollard's book, 
"The Lost Cause," with graphic force and stinging 
sarcasm. 

"Care was taken," says the Confederate com- 
mittee, "to inform the prisoners that any attempt on 
their part [to accept their liberation] would be 
effedualiii defeaiecV; and adds: "Dahlgren was 
killed, his command captured or scattered, the 
prisoners in Libby were awed and kept down." 

The writer does not remember that much formal 
care was taken to inform the prisoners; they were 
indeed informed in the first place slily, and by a 
loyal negro employed at the prison, who excitedly 
related to the prisoners how he had assisted in 
digging the mine and charging it with a quantity 
of powder which his lurid fancy increased to tons. 
Whatever credit we all gave to Dick Turner's sub- 
sequent announcement relating to the mine and its 
purpose, the colored man's report was the one that 
carried conviction to our minds, and thus in one 
lonesome instance in the war the much-derided 
"intelligent contraband" was vindicated. 

As to the committee's remark, that the prisoners 
were "awed and kept down" that night, the sur- 
vivors of Libby will unanimously confirm them. 
The writer, speaking for himself, declares with the 

10 



128 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

utmost candor, that as he lay on the prison floor that 
night, just over the mine, with the slave's fresh and 
ghastly message mixed up with the Lord's Prayer, 
which he now remembered with uncommon distinct- 
ness, he certainly experienced an awe which his 
publishers are requested to print in italics. A flood 
of thoughts and an irresistible yearning to be home, 
or at least farther north, crept over him ; and as he 
lay upon the hard floor, looking upwards in the 
darkness, and listened for the expected sound of 
Dahlgren's carbines, which was to be the signal for 
the explosion, and pictured in his imagination the 
pyrotechnics which the Confederacy had prepared 
for its guests; as he saw in his busy fancy the 
mangled remains of himself and his twelve hundred 
comrades ascending skywards in a volcano of timber, 
brick, iron and mortar, and thought of Dahlgren, 
then a few miles distant, and of the man with the 
fuse only a few yards ofP, he admits now, when he is 
twenty-six years older and somewhat cooler, that he 
was awed. 

His chief agony of mind was caused by the 
harrowing uncertainty as to how many minutes 
more he could be "■kept down.'''' He would have 
listened with respect, if not with favor, to any 
proposition of the Confederates for a conference and 



"AN INDIFFERENT MARKSMAN." 129 

compromise that did not necessarily involve the 
actual sacrifice of his honor or his limbs. Although 
he would not deny that he had participated in some 
unpleasant affairs in which several Confederates had 
been hurt, there was no absolute proof that any of 
his shots had taken effect, for he was but an indif- 
ferent marksman even when he was cool. Besides, 
if the Confederates were bent on making an example 
of their enemies, surely the blowing up of one-half 
of his comrades would have been an example suf- 
ficiently frightful for practical purposes. He felt 
assured that his maintenance was not a severe burden 
upon the South. Perhaps a truce or respite of ten 
days or so might be effected. The writer had lived 
in the South previous to the war, and had frieads 
there. He had been baptized a Catholic. There 
were, in fact, many Catholics in Libby. Bishop 
Lynch would have been astonished at the number, 
had he called that night. Was the Bishop in town? 
He had influence with the President, and had secured 
that precious respite of ten days for Sawyer and 
Flynn, and Sawyer was a Protestant. He was but 
human, and he thought bitterly of that fatal delay in 
the tunnel caused by his fat comrade but three short 
weeks ago; but for which he might now be home. 
That German was probably at this very moment 



130 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

sipping wine with his friends in New York, with a 
new uniform on, and a thirty days' furlough in his 
pocket. He hoped the stray shots so frequently 
heard about the streets of Richmond would not be 
mistaken for the proper signal, and he did fervently 
trust that Dick Turner, who, he understood, had 
charge of the fuse, was sober. He was but nineteen ; 
and he longed for daylight and a mirror, that he 
might see if his hair was still black. 

But the long night passed, and he rose with 
mingled feelings of gratitude and 'surprise; he fully 
expected to rise earlier. 

The captives at Libby and Belle Isle rose that 
morning still ignorant of the fact that within the 
distance of a gunshot the heroic young Pennsyl- 
vanian who sought tp be their deliverer lay pierced 
with bullets and in the hands of his foes, and that 
by that circumstance alone the most barbarous crime 
in the Christian era had been prevented. 

The statement repeatedly made at Richmond 
that the order said to have been found in Dahlgren's 
pocket had been sent into the Union lines and there 
pronounced genuine, is false ; the only color of truth 
in the statement being that photograph copies of the 
alleged order were shown to a few persons, not one 
of whom was competent by familiarity with his hand- 



''THE FORGER BLUNDERED:' 131 

writing to judge of its genuine character. But truly, 
says the Bard of Scotland: 

"The best laid schemes o' mice and men 
Gang aft aglee." 

The forger blundered! In signing the order he 
misspelled Dahlgreii's name, and wrote "U. Dalh- 
gren," misplacing the h in the first syllable. Its 
spurious character is further shown by the use of 
the initial "U." instead of the full name "Ulric," 
which it was Dahlgren's unvarying custom to use in 
signing. In an examination of scores of his last 
letters written to his home from the field, not one 
was found where this rule had been departed from, 
even to the last one addressed to his father from 
Stevensburg four days before his death. 

To suppose that order genuine, we must first 
believe that Ulric Dahlgren, an intelligent and edu- 
cated young man but a short time out of college, did 
not know how to spell his own name and wrote it 
wrong in a document of such supreme importance. 

Again, if he wrote that order, where are its 
duplicates, and where the officers and men of his 
command who ever saw or heard of it? None were 
ever found, but on the contrary Lieutenant Bartley 
and all the officers who were with the expedition, and 



132 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

General Kilpatrick, who was the senior in command, 
deny that that order or any like it was ever known 
to them, and pronounce it bogus in the most 
emphatic terms. 

To apply the name assassin to this young 
soldier, then in his twenty-second year, who had 
lost a leg in battle and had been promoted to 
a coloners rank for distinguished valor on the battle- 
field, who had been reared and beloved in a Christian 
family, and who in nature was gentle and the 
personification of chivalrous young manhood, is as 
monstrous as the insults to his dead body were 
cowardly and despicable. 

The sufferings of the Union prisoners had 
touched the deepest soundings of his noble nature, 
and to compass their deliverance was the most ardent 
ambition of his heart. Inexorable fate denied him 
the prize, but fame, more kind, has placed his effort 
beside the greatest of victories and beyond the reach 
of defamers. To employ the figure applied by Koscoe 
Conkling to Grant — "The name of Ulric Dahlgren 
is like a torch in the night: The more it is shaken 
the brighter it burns;" and as long as our history 
lasts and the story of the Union prisoners is remem- 
bered, that name will be cherished with affection and 
veneration. 



" CAN PERSUADE AN ENLIGHTENED WORLD:' 133 

A single circumstance aside from all others 
proves beyond possible doubt that the employment 
of the forgery to justify the meditated murder at 
Libby and the ghoulish treatment of Colonel Dahl- 
gren's body, was an afterthought. Many hours 
before Dahlgren was ambushed and killed, and there- 
fore before it was even claimed by the conspirators 
that the order had been seen or that it existed, the 
mine under Libby Prison was prepared, and that the 
atrocious deed would have been consummated had 
the entrance to the city been effected at the time is 
as certain as human evidence ever foreshadowed the 
intended execution of a crime; and that crime would 
have been committed whether the column of rescue 
was commanded by Dahlgren or Sheridan, and 
whether they had announced their intentions in orders 
or not. 

The eulogists and biographers of Mr. Davis 
will indeed be singularly fortunate if, in the light of 
these established facts, they can persuade an enlight- 
ened world to believe that the massacre of the Libby 
prisoners was never really intended, but was a blood- 
less stratagem of war, and should be regarded merely 
in the light of what Judge Ould softly describes in 
fine Latin as "legislation in-terrorem.'''' 



CHAPTER VIII 

Responsihility for Interruption of Exchange 

— Choice of Prisoners for President 

—Tlie Assassination— Arrest 

of Jefferson Davis. 

IN his account of Anderson ville published in Bel- 
ford's Magazine, Mr. Davis, after charging the 
United States Government with responsibility 
for the interruption of the exchange, says : 

" Andersonville, Ga., was selected after careful 
investigation for the following reasons: It was in a high 
pine woods region in a productive farming country, had 
never been devastated by the enemy, was well-watered 
and near to Americus, a central depot for collecting the 
tax in kind and purchasing provisions for our armies. 
The climate was mild, and according to the best informa- 
tion there was in the water and soil of the locality no 
recognizable source of disease. 

" A stockade was constructed of dimensions adapted 
to the number of prisoners who might probably be con- 
fined there. It was on a hill overlooking the valley of 
the Sweetwater, a tributary of which stream flowed 
through the prison enclosure. 



" POTENT AGENTS OF DISEASE AND DEATH." 135 

"The difficulties encountered in the care of the large 
and ever-increasing number of prisoners may be briefly 
enumerated thus : 

"1. The exceptionally inhuman act of the North 
in declaring medicines to be contraband, to which there 
is but one, if indeed there be one, other example in 
modern war. 

" 2. The insufficient means of transportation and 
the more inadequate means of repairing railroads and 
machinery, so that as the war continued the insufficiency 
became more embarrassing. 

"3. The numerical inferiority of our army made it 
necessary that all available force should be at the front; 
therefore the guards for prisons were mainly composed 
of old men and boys, and but a scanty allowance of these. 

" 4. The medical officers were not more than were 
required with the troops, and contract physicians dis- 
liked the prison service, among other reasons, naturally, 
because of the impossibility of getting the proper medi- 
cines. 

" 5. The food was different from that to which most 
of the prisoners had been accustomed, particularly in the 
use of cornmeal instead of wheat flour. Of the latter, it 
was not possible in 1864: to get an adequate supply in 
Andersonville. It was not starvation, as has been alleged, 
but acclimation, unsuitable diet and despondency which 
were the potent agents of disease and death. These it 
was not in our power to remove." 

Continuing, Mr. Davis refers to his own ill- 
treatment by General Nelson A. Miles at Fortress 
Monroe, whom he scolds as a heartless vulgarian 



136 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

under whose care he was reduced to little more than 
a skeleton. " The selection of a gentleman," says 
Mr. Davis, " was not suitable to the cruel purposes 
of E. M. Stanton," then Secretary of War. 

Speaking of tlie choice of General Winder to 
rule over Federal prisoners, he says: "He was 
selected, among other reasons, because of confidence 
in his kindness to prisoners, as specifically stated by 
James A. Seddon, Secretary of War; S. Cooper, 
Adjutant General; Geo. W, Brent, and Jefferson 
Davis:' 

Seddon, in 1875, wrote a letter to W. S. Winder, 
in which he says of General John H. Winder: "I 
thought him marked by real humanity toward the 
weak and helpless, such as ivomen and children for 
instance''^ — a tribute vs^hich Mr. Seddon wrote cer- 
tainly with his tongue in his cheek, after the fashion 
of sly humorists. 

Then comes Mr. Davis' tribute to his old friend, 
written from Montreal in 1867 to Dr. Stevenson, 
chief surgeon in charge at Andersonville, who was 
writing a book to exonerate himself and those who 
consorted with him in the iniquities there. He says: 
"I have never doubted that all had been done for 
the comfort and preservation of the prisoners at 
Andersonville that the circumstances rendered pos- 



''CRUELTY TO THOSE IN HIS POWER:' 137 

sible. General Winder I bad known from my first 
entrance into the United States army as a gallant 
soldier and honorable gentleman. Cruelty to those 
in his power, defenseless and sick men, was incon- 
sistent with either the character of a soldier or a 
gentleman. I was always, therefore, confident that 
the charge was unjustly imputed." 

General Imboden is quoted at length by Mr. 
Davis on the subject of Andersonville — for what 
reason is not clearly disclosed, as the former says he 
knew Wirz but slightly, and his statements show 
that he knew nothing about the prisoners or their 
keepers worth quoting. 

He complains that he was not called on as a 
witness in the Wirz trial to tell all he thought he 
knew; and when he wrote it up for the New York 
Herald, the editor declined to publish the account, 
which at last found a receiver in Mr. Davis. 

Undoubtedly The Herald did the General a good 
service in declining his MSS., having seen some of 
his efforts at war history, for which he had a con- 
suming penchant that often annoyed General Lee 
and exasperated his commanders. Mr. Davis does 
the General the honor to quote him in saying that 
the murderer Wirz was a humane and innocent man 
selected as a victim to the " bloody Moloch of 1865 " 
— whatever that was. 



138 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

It seems hard tliat the General who proved such 
a terror to Federal sutlers in the Valley during the 
war should have his name given wrong in so con- 
spicuous an article by his old master. Such is fame 
and the lot of those who put their faith in princes. 

There is no reason to suppose that General 
Imboden would himself have permitted any cruelty 
to the prisoners if he had had any real and perma- 
nent authority over them. But the truth is, being 
incapacitated for active service, he was sent to look 
around the prisons for a little time, for want of other 
employment, and was simply tolerated by Winder as 
a visitor, and had no real authority, as he would have 
easily discovered had he gone further than a mere 
offer of suggestions, and these Winder treated with 
silent disdain. 

The Union prisoners taken in the Gettysburg 
campaign will remember General Imboden, whose 
men had charge of them during the march from 
Gettysburg through the Shenandoah Valley to 
Staunton. Beyond a habit of exchanging hats and 
any loose wearing apparel with the prisoners while 
they were asleep, the writer, who was with the 
column, saw no vicious ill-treatment of the pris- 
oners ; in fact, the guards who indulged in these 
"swaps," as they termed them, made it a rule when 



» CLOTHED ONLY IN SUNSHINE." 139 

tliey took an officer's hat or coat to leave their own 
gray raiment beside the sleeping prisoner — a thing 
that never would have been tolerated for a moment 
by the guards of Winder. These "swaps" went on, 
however, to such an extent that our Union officers 
who left Gettysburg very blue grew prematurely 
gray; and so much so that in passing through the 
various towns in the Yalley they received cheers and 
pie as Confederates from enthusiastic citizens. Had 
John H. Winder been in charge, instead of General 
Imboden, the Union prisoners would have gone 
through the towns of three States clothed only in 
sunshine and covered only with their blushes. 

In army reminiscences General Imboden, 
although not faultless in the matter of strict 
accuracy, is always entertaining ; and his career as a 
commander is tolerably well described in the phrases 
of our national game ; he was not much of a batter, 
but he was fair in the field, and, like his comrade 
Eosser, he " ran bases with great speed." 

Mr. Davis quotes some resolutions said to have 
been adopted by prisoners at Savannah in Sep- 
tember, 1864, and to which is appended the name of 
one P. Bradley, chairman of a committee in behalf of 
the prisoners, one of which reads: 



140 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

" That while allowing the Confederate government 
all due praise for the attention paid to the prisoners, 
numbers of our men are consigned to early graves ; and 

^^ Resolved, That ten. thousand of our brave com- 
rades have descended into untimely graves, caused by 
difference in climate, food, etc. ; and 

" Resolved, That we have suffered patiently, and are 
still willing to suffer if by so doing we can benefit the 
country; but we most respectfully beg leave to say that 
we are not willing to suffer to further the ends of any 
party or clique, to the detriment of our families or our 
country." 

This irresponsible and inaccurate expression of 
a few malcontents who had borrowed the familiar 
excuses of their keepers about "difference in climate, 
food," etc., and which utterly belies the sentiments 
of the vast majority of the Union prisoners, strongly 
suggests the high-sounding proclamation of the 
three tailors of Tooley street, whose resolves began: 
"We, the people of England," etc. That Mr. Davis 
should be driven to the necessity of seizing this 
straw with such ludicrous eagerness is a painful 
signal of distress. Nor will the date of the resolu- 
tions lose significance, near as it preceded the Presi- 
dential election of 1864, in which Mr. Davis had so 
keen an interest. When from this he descends to 
quote an anonymous letter- writer in the New York 



" CURSING THE LINCOLN ADMINISTRATION:' 141 

Dailij Neivs (anti-war paper), who was "said to be 
an Andersonville prisoner and a member of General 
Sheridan's staff," and in which the writer endeavors 
to prove Wirz a humane man and his comrades all 
thieves, liars, and cowards who had brought on them- 
selves all the miseries of which they complained, 
etc., Mr. Davis confesses with amazing candor his 
pitiable poverty in defensive resources. 

A manifest object is to show that the expres- 
sions of a few malcontents (doubtless coached by 
the rebel authorities), who, if they live, will read 
with mortification in 1894 their words of 1864, was 
to create the impression that the Union prisoners in 
the autumn of that year were in a mutinous state, 
"•cursing the Lincoln admiuistration," and longing 
to so express themselves at the polls in November. 

The narration of an incident well remembered 
by the prisoners will effectually dispose of this flimsy 
falsehood which Southern newspapers were indus- 
triously circulating in the Confederacy at the time. 

In an election held in the Andersonville 
stockade in October, 1864, for the purpose of show- 
ing the choice of the prisoners between Mr. Lincoln 
and General McClellan, the opposing candidates for 
the Presidency, General McClellan received fifteen 
hundred votes and Mr. Lincoln six thousand. At 



142 bastiles of the confederacy. 

"Camp Sorghum," near Columbia, S. C, wiiere the 
writer was confined witli the Federal officers, and 
where an election was held during the same month. 
General McClellan received less than three hundred 
votes, while Mr, Lincoln received eleven hundred. 

It is quite needless to add that none of the 
Southern newspapers to which these returns were 
sent saw fit to publish them, although the editors 
must have known that it would have been interesting 
news to their readers, contrasting strongly as it did 
with their previous representations. 

In referring to these facts, no impeachment is 
made of the patriotism of the minority who cast 
their ballots for their beloved old commander whom 
they had followed on the Peninsula. Their suffrages, 
justly interpreted, evinced no waning of love for the 
Union and no diminished faith in its restoration. 
They fought as bravely in the field and suffered as 
patiently in prison as did their comrades of the 
majority ; but no honest man will assert and no sane 
man will believe that the famishing patriots who cast 
this ballot were "cursing the administration of Mr. 
Lincoln," nor yet condemning the just and necessary 
stand taken by our Government to hasten the end of 
the Confederacy, then gasping for life, by spiking 
the rifles of fifty thousand fat and healthy Confed- 



''THE RED DEW OF ONE BAPTISM:' 143 

erate prisoners, then held in the firm grip of Grant. 
In field and prison the Union soldiers, Democrats 
and Eepublicans, fought, suffered and died side by 
side ; the same trench covers them at Andersonville 
and Salisbury, and the "red dew of one baptism is 
over them all." 

It is clearly manifest that in this, Mr. Davis' 
final statement on Andersonville, he makes no whole- 
hearted attempt to disprove the charges of inhuman 
and systematic cruelty inflicted upon the Union 
prisoners, and that his only real hope and his para- 
mount object was to divide the public verdict on 
the question of his personal responsibility. 

It is not seriously required to analyze his own 
weak inventions for defense, nor the worthless 
indorsements of the disreputable coadjutors whom 
he quotes, six of whose names appear with his own 
in the specifications and charges on which Wirz was 
found guilty and hanged. To expose their feeble- 
ness and falsity is as needless as to use a sledge- 
hammer to crack a filbert; but they are interesting 
exhibits of unparalleled effrontery, and furnish a 
fitting sequel to the most gigantic villainy that ever 
this country witnessed. 

The guileless air with which his partners in 

guilt are introduced with himself, and the grotesque 
11 



144 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

spectacle of Stevenson, Seddon, Wirz and the Winder 
trio as they gravely proceed to exchange certificates 
of character and innocence with each other, is proof 
that Mr. Davis, in his eighty-first year and in his 
feeble health, still retained amid the dismal wreck 
of his fortunes some lingering sparks of a humor 
that had often diverted his- friends in earlier and 
happier days — monstrous as it may seem that the 
tragedy of Andersonville should have been chosen 
as the theme for its exercise. 

But even this performance is outdone by his 
old friend and servant Seddon, who, writing a letter 
for publication in 1875, and speaking of Winder, 
says: "I thought him marked by real humanity 
toward the weak and helpless, such as iconicn and 
children, for instance — by that spirit of protection 
and defense which distinguishes the really gallant 
soldier. To me he always expressed sympathy and 
manifested a strong desire to provide for the wants 
and comforts of the prisoners under his charge," etc. 

The posting of this pious certificate of holiness 
on the tomb of John H. Winder, who, if alive, would 
have resented it as an intolerable impertinence, will 
be a revelation to the acquaintances of Mr. James A. 
Seddon who never suspected his latent genius as a 
satirist. 



fmrmr 



l>^ 



^'}ffiW^^\\\\ i\\l''l/"T li' 



Si'urn 



I 

1 ^/V 



i/VlTT.- 



Ltit^L '1 



^ ,^ -^ ' 




Shot by the guard at Libby." 



''MAY GOD HAVE MERCY r' 145 

This will be the better appreciated as the name 
and deeds of the subject are recalled to the memory 
of his afflicted countrymen. The day after Winder 
left Richmond to take charge of Andersonville, a 
Richmond paper said: " General Winder left yester- 
day for Andersonville to take charge there. . May 
God have mercij on the Yankee prisoners P'' 

So well, indeed, was he known at Richmond, 
that the Confederate soldiers and citizens bestowed 
upon him, even early in the war, the descriptive title 
of "Hog Winder," an aggravated and unprovoked 
libel that must have wrung a unanimous and indig- 
nant grunt of disgust from every maligned porker in 
the Confederacy. 

How he "was marked by real humanity toward 
the weak and helpless, such as women and children, 
for instance," was displayed in his blasphemy and 
blackguardism in the presence of the humane and 
Christian ladies whose donation of food for the 
starving prisoners was brutally refused admission at 
the prison gate; and when the monster W^irz, his 
subordinate, uttered insults and abuse so filthy and 
vile in the presence of those noble ladies, that wit- 
nesses would not repeat it at his trial. 

Says Mr. Davis: "General Winder I had known 
from my first entrance into the United States army; 



146 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

cruelty to those in his power, defenseless and sick 
men, was inconsistent with the character of either a 
soldier or a gentleman." 

Beside these tributes to the righteousness of 
John H. Winder, let us place this memorable evi- 
dence of his chivalry: 

"Headquarters Military Prison, ] 
" Andersonville, Ga., July 27, 1864. [ 
"General Orders No. 13. 

"The officers on duty and ia charge of the battery 
of Florida artillery at the time will, upon receiving 
notice that the enemy has approached within seven miles 
of this post, open upon the stockade [prison] with grape- 
shot, without reference to the situation of affairs beyond 
these lines of defense. 

"John H. Winder, Bi^ig. Geril Commdg.'''' 

This would seem to be the place for Judge Ould 
to re-appear and explain that this order, like the 
sentence of Sawyer and Flynn, the Confederate law 
consigning colored United States soldiers back to 
slavery, and the meditated slaughter of twelve 
hundred Union officers by the Libby powder-mine, 
was also to be added to the ever-increasing acts in 
the Confederacy classed as "legislation in-ier- 
rorem.''' 

When this miscreant was suddenly stricken 
down on hearinsr that Sherman had reached the sea 



''BE SURE AND CUT DOWN." 147 

three months later, and near the very gate of 
the stockade that held his starving and freezing 
victims, it is said (whether true or not, the expres- 
sion was perfectly characteristic) that, realizing that 
he must go, he braced himself up and uttered these 
words: "My trust is in Christ; I hope I shall be 
saved yet. Be sure and cut down the Yankee ^^ris- 
oners' rations.'''' 

There can be no doubt that had he lived until 
the tenth day of November, 1865, he would have 
expiated his crimes on the scaffold beside his sub- 
ordinate Wirz. 

A countless number of his acts during the 
war might easily be cited to show the fearful 
depravity of the man whom Jefferson Davis, with 
eternity near, declares he selected to rule over Union 
captives because, after a lifetime acquaintance, he 
believed him "/o be kind to prisoners!'''' 

Among the Southern people to-day, evidence 
could be easily multiplied to show the depravity of 
the man whom Davis and Seddon vouch for; but to 
borrow the quaint metaphor of Mr. Davis' benevo- 
lent bondsman, Horace Greeley, "in order to test the 
quality of a ham, it is not necessary to eat a whole 
hog." A little of Winder goes a good way. 



148 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

Mr. Davis wastes great and unnecessary energy 
in his endeavor to show that AVirz would not and 
could not, from personal knowledge, show that he 
was in the personal confidence of the former in the 
iniquitous plot that was afoot at Andersonville, and 
there is indeed a reasonable doubt that he ever 
was. His well-known gust for cruelty and readiness 
for murder when it was deemed necessary for his 
purposes were the special qualities that determined 
the selection of the fiendish Swiss captain — not as a 
trusted manager, but as a reliable and relentless 
underling who could be used in his own special 
sphere without being admitted to the inner counsels 
of his employers. A human monstrosity and mur- 
derer he was, but his intellect was feeble, and his 
lack of finesse excluded him from the close inquisi- 
tion and from any compromising confidence. 

Winder, who was Davis' bosom friend for thirty- 
four years, and Stevenson, the "scientist" and vac- 
cinator who had charge of the medical branch of the 
Andersonville business, were more to his taste in 
carrying out the " system." They did not receive 
their instructions in writing from Richmond, but 
they knew every hour of the day and night " what 
they were there for," namely: to see that "natural 
agencies " should not be interfered with in doing the 



''HIS SENTENCE WOULD BE COMMUTED." 149 

work "faster than the bullet." This brace of worthies 
were not much given to letter-writing about 
the real condition of things at Andersonville, but 
both were in close and constant conference with the 
Richmond authorities; a telegraph wire connected 
their headquarters with the "President" and his 
Secretary of War. 

Poor old Father Boyle, the confessor of Wirz, 
is drafted into the service of Mr. Davis as a witness 
fifteen years after the war, and made to repeat the 
story of how through him "a high cabinet officer" 
offered to commute the sentence of Wirz the night 
before the execution if he would implicate Mr. Davis 
in the crime of Andersonville. 

"The high cabinet officer" is not named, but it 
is not difficult in the light of Mr. Davis' previous 
expressions to conclude that Mr. Stanton is the 
person meant. 

Father Boyle, Wirz, and his counsel Schade are 
each reported as saying that they were called upon 
by a man whose name neither of them knows, and 
who told them separately that he was authorized by 
"the high cabinet officer" to assure Wirz that his 
sentence would be commuted on the condition named, 
and that Wirz, having no personal or positive knowl- 
edge of Mr. Davis' part in the Andersonville crime, 



150 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

refused to give the compromising testimony, and was 
hanged next morning, and as a matter of course pro- 
testing his own innocence. 

If this alleged emissary's story is true, we are 
compelled to assume that the Secretary of War and 
the President of the United States declared through 
a nameless messenger to the murderer AVirz, his law- 
yer and his confessor, their readiness to prostitute 
their high offices in a shameful bargain to secure the 
conviction of Davis and subvert the law that 
demanded the murderer's life, and that they were 
willing to trust the dangerous knowledge of such a 
contract to hosts of eager and implacable political 
and personal foes. 

That Edwin M. Stanton, the greatest of War 
Ministers, was immaculate or over-scrupulous in 
methods amid the extraordinary circumstances that 
environed him during the war, his warmest partisans 
will not claim; but that he was the reckless, clumsy 
fool that Mr. Davis paints him in this instance, his 
bitterest foes will not believe. 

That a nameless man approached the three 
persons named, as they declare he did, may be 
assumed as true, but the inferential charge that he 
came with the knowledge and authority of the Secre- 
tary of War aud the President is preposterous and 



"GUILELESS benevolence:' 151 

infamous. To reasoning minds a far more plausible 
theory is that the emissary came not from a '"high 
cabinet officer " to save the life of Wirz, but from 
astute partisans of Davis then infesting the capital, 
and was a bold device adapted for effect and to 
improve the uncertain fortunes of Mr. Davis, then a 
prisoner at Fortress Monroe. 

As to Father Boyle's expressed confidence in 
the innocence of Wirz, it indicates nothing but the 
direction of his sympathies, and proves nothing but 
the guileless benevolence of the good old priest's 
heart and his susceptibility to the wiles of the subtle 
conspirators who were using him. 

But even if this whole story were true and the 
nameless man was really the emissary of the Secre- 
tary of War, it would still leave the real question 
about Andersonville absolutely untouched, as Mr. 
Davis well knew ; and herein lies the proof of what 
has already been said in this narrative: that Mr. 
Davis in his final writing on Andersonville does not 
seriously attempt the impossible task of disproving 
the charges of systematic cruelties to Federal pris- 
oners in the South, but that his paramount object 
and hope was to divide with a plea of poverty and 
ingenious sophistry the public verdict as to his share 
in the atrocious plot. 



152 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

It was indeed a deplorable situation for a man 
in his eighty-first year, to whom nature and training- 
had given brilliant capacities, and to whom fortune 
had presented great opportunities, to be at last com- 
pelled to resort to the subterfuge and sophistry that 
characterizes his last defense and emphasizes his last 
lamentable failure. 

Technical provisions and impediments of consti- 
tutional law interposed in 1865, with the unprece- 
dented condition of the country emerging from civil 
war and in the chaos of the early stages of recon- 
struction, seemed to render it impolitic, if not impos- 
sible, to single out Jefferson Davis for trial on 
charges of treason ; and amid such an unparalleled 
condition of affairs he escaped the just penalties of 
his deeds at Andersonville, Salisbury and Belle Isle. 
Our highest jurists and statesmen knew then, and 
our country knows now, that the people of the South 
and a large portion of mankind would have charged 
the North with the malicious deception of trying- 
Davis for the Andersonville crime, while in reality 
persecuting, condemning and degrading him as the 
leader of Secession. 

Mr, Davis and his more sagacious partisans were 
not slow to see and take advantage of the situation. 
From the moment the gates closed upon him at 



''THE PURCHASE OF A WHITE ELEPHANT.' 153 

Fortress Monroe he was posed as a martyr, and to 
the study and enactment of this his last role his 
remaining days were studiously devoted; and cir- 
cumstances singularly combined to aid him. 

The North, amid the flush of joy that followed 
Appomattox, was stricken by the assassination of Mr. 
Lincoln. Jefferson Davis was a fugitive, and the 
fierce resentment that rose against the vile brood of 
assassins paralyzed for a time the national reason, 
and a few irrational men in authority at Washington 
unwisely and unjustly coupled the name of Mr. Davis 
with the assassination plot. 

Then came the lamentable folly and flaming 
offering of an immense reward for his capture, and 
the consequent arrest of a large number of belated 
loyal citizens who wore whiskers under their chins, 
and who indignantly shaved on learning that they 
had been mistaken for " Jeff Davis." 

Fortunately for Mr. Davis and unhappily for the 
whole country, he was taken, and a hundred thousand 
dollars of the public treasure was thus wasted in the 
purchase of a white elephant, and to the well-knowu 
disgust of General Graut and other men of his 
sterling good sense. 

The wisdom of Lincoln was never more forcibly 
illustrated, nor his secret wishes more dextrously 



154 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

imparted than in regard to the then probable capture 
of Mr. Davis, when he related to General Grant 
(who had delicately invited some expression of his 
wishes) the story of the Irishman who, feeling that 
he could no longer keep the temperance pledge, sug- 
gested to the priest who had handed him a "soft" 
drink, that he'd be "moity glad if his riverence, 
while his back was turned, would drop a little 
whisky in the lemonade unheknoimist to him." 

But the wise Lincoln was no more, and greedy 
and rapacious political adventurers swarmed to the 
capital like the locusts to Egypt. Buncombe and 
cheap jingoism succeeded in drowning out the voices 
of wise counsellors; the boast and bluster of dema- 
gogues succeeded the words and deeds of tried 
patriots: the armies of Grant and Sherman struck 
tents and left for their farms and homes; political 
hacks who had survived the draft masqueraded in 
"loyal" colors; and a survey of the situation about 
the national capital recalled the pithy saying of Sam 
Johnson, "that patriotism was the last refuge of a 
scoundrel," 



CHAPTER IX. 

After Cbickaniauga— General Grant Appears 

— Battle of Lookout Monntain — 

The March to the Sea. 

SHE fact that more than fifty Union prisoners 
were killed and twice that number cruelly 
injured by the dogs employed at Anderson- 
ville, is not squarely denied by Mr. Davis, as the 
ambiguous and significant reference to that atrocity 
will show. "I have been informed since the war,'' 
says Mr. Davis, "that there was not one bloodhound 
at Andersonville prison, but some deer or fox hounds 
were kept to follow prisoners who, Avhen paroled for 
voluntary service, broke faith and fled." He care- 
fully refrains from any reference to the countless 
number of times he was informed by citizens of 
Georgia, humane Confederate officers and Southern 
newspapers about the barbarous contract between 
Winder, AVirz and Wesley W. Turner, the latter the 
owner of tlie pack of fierce bloodhounds during 
the war. 

The following accurate description of one of 
these beasts, well known to still- surviving prisoners. 



156 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

will hardly pass at a bench show as the portrait of 
Mr. Davis' fox or deer hounds among dog-fanciers: 

G. F. Elliott, formerly of the 1st Marine 
Artillery, an Anderson ville prisoner, says: "I have 
a pretty lively recollection of a Cuban bloodhound 
named 'Spot' at Andersonville ; weight, one hundred 
and fifty pounds; height, three feet four inches; 
length from tip to tip, six feet five inches. Eather 
a queer kind of a fox or deer hound. He mangled 
more than one poor fellow who strove to get back to 
'God's country' without permission from Jeff Davis 
or AVirz." 

Negro soldiers were not deemed socially good 
enough to serve the Confederacy as soldiers until 
Lee declared that the Southern cause would be lost 
in the spring of 1865 without their help, and not 
until two months before his surrender did the 
Southern Congress pass the law authorizing their 
enlistment. Up to that time the black man was not 
thought worthy to serve with Lee in Virginia, but, 
by Davis' admission, dogs were good enough sub- 
stitutes for Southern soldiers to serve with Winder, 
to track, maim and kill Union prisoners in Georgia. 

Perhaps it may soften the grief of wives and 
mothers in the North to learn, after the lapse of so 
many years and from so high an authority as Jeffer 



" THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND STARVED SKELETONS." \ 57 

son Davis, what particular kind of hounds they were 
that tore their protectors to death at Andersonville. 

Mr. Davis says: "Andersonville was selected 
for the reasons that it was in a high pine-woods 
region, in a productive farming country; had never 
been devastated by the enemy ; was well-watered and 
near to Americus, a central depot for collecting the 
tax in kind and purchasing provisions for our armies ; 
and it was on a hill overlooking the valley of the 
Sweet Water." 

So far as the prison stockade was concerned, it 
was indeed in the midst of a high pine woods, every 
tree of which was cut down within the stockade 
before a single prisoner entered it; and in August, 
1864,Avhen the thermometer ranged from 110, 120 to 
127 and 130 degrees, thirty-five thousand starved skel- 
etons stood in the fiery flood of the sun and looked 
over the "deadline" and wall into the inviting shade 
of those same tall pines as lost souls might gaze 
from Hades into the Garden of Eden. 

"It was on a hill overlooking the Sweet Water." 
Precisely so. That clear, deep and beautiful stream 
flowed past the fainting multitude just two hundred 
and fifty feet outside the hospital and prison wall. 
The prisoners' only drink came from the sluggish 
ditch, a "tributary" of the Sweet Water, and which 

12 



158 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

was already the sink of a Confederate camp before 
it entered the prison inclosure, the stench of which, 
citizen Ambrose Spencer swears, could be detected 
at a distance of two miles. The water of that, the 
only stream accessible to the prisoners, was so 
polluted that even when used for bathing it produced 
gangrene in numerous instances. 

Mr. Davis continues: "It was near Americus, 
a central depot of supplies, for collecting the tax in 
kind and purchasing provisions for our armies." 
Correct again. It was in the midst of the " Garden 
of the Confederacy" the stockade was built. The 
Union prisoners starved with plenty in sight. They 
blistered, fainted and died in the sun's fiery flood 
with the shade of the tall-pine region in full view. 
They died with agonizing thirst around the poison- 
ous prison ditch, with the crystal stream of the Sweet 
Water, fifteen feet wide and five to ten feet deep, 
flowing untouched, cool and delicious, two hundred 
and fifty feet beyond the "dead line"! 

What, then, shall we say of Mr. Davis' wretched 
mockery of excuses in the light of these facts proven 
by witnesses living and dead. Union and Confed- 
erate ? 

" The insufiicient means of transportation !" The 
supplies were within the radius of a few miles, and 



" THE DONATION REFUSED BLASPHEMOUSLY:' 159 

long trains passed the gate of the stockade by day 
and night bearing supplies to Lee's army in Vir- 
ginia from the "Garden of the Confederacy," in the 
midst of which the Union prisoners were starving. 

Transportation! When Christian men and 
women brought food for the prisoners and furnished 
the trcmsportation the donation was refused blas- 
phemously and insultingly at the prison gate by 
John H. Winder ! And this was the man whom Mr. 
Davis asserts he selected to rule the Southern 
prisons "because of his confidence in his kindness to 
prisoners" ! 

" The act of the North declaring medicines to 
be contraband!" Did the stringency of the blockade 
at Savannah, Charleston and Wilmington that shut 
out tea, coffee and quinine dry up the Sweet Water 
creek and destroy the shade of the tall-pine region? 
Were the cabbages, sweet potatoes and corn of the 
"Garden of the Confederacy" contraband? Was it 
not proven on the Wirz trial the amount of such 
garden vegetables raised about Andersonville in 1804 
was unprecedented? Did the blockade make it 
necessary for the doctors and nurses there to use 
gangrene-infected rags several times over to dress 
fresh wounds, as Professor Jones and Dr. Bates 
declare they saw done? "It was impossible," says 



160 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

the former, "for any wound to escape contagion 
under these circumstances." 

Imported medicines, coffee, tea, and other 
foreign products were indeed scarce in 1864:. But 
the South was not destitute of rags, shade, straw, 
fuel or fresh water, and the Confederate Dr. Bates 
solemnly declares that in his professional opinion 
the allowance of these easily obtainable necessities 
would have saved the lives of seventy-five per cent, 
of the prisoners Avho died. 

So unmistakable was the evidence of the exist- 
ing murderous plot, and so jealously did the vile 
brood of conspirators guard the operations of the 
"natural agencies," that this humane physician con- 
cealed raw potatoes in his pockets and dropped them 
surreptitiously to prisoners suffering with scurvy, 
as an anti- scorbutic, even after he had been warned 
that it was strictly forbidden to take anything in to 
the prisoners and after he had been arrested many 
times. 

Mr. Davis continues: "The food was different 
from that to which most of the prisoners had been 
accustomed, particularly in the use of cornmeal 
instead of flour, and of this it was not possible in 
1864 to get a supply at Anderson ville." 

Did the scarcity of flour prevent the separation 
of the husk from the meal, the prisoners' only food. 



" WORK FASTER THAN THE BULLET.- 161 

which, as Professor Jones says, acted as an irritant 
to the alimentary canal without adding anything to 
the nutriment of the bread? Was it not shown at 
the time that the unvarying use of this food rapidly 
prepared the victims for the ravages of scurvy which 
swept them away by thousands? Was not the use 
of meal supplied in this way the very thing which 
was boldly recommended by a miscreant high in 
authority in the commissary department at Rich- 
mond? Did not that villain ingeniously point that 
husk out to the Richmond authorities as one of the 
"natural agencies" that was to do the loork "faster 
than the bullet"? 

When Professor Jones recommended the making 
of soup for the sick out of the cow and calf heads, 
adding a few vegetables such as sweet potatoes, cab- 
bage and corn, which, he says, would have been 
highly nutritious and with little additional cost, and 
the materials for which soups, he says, existed in 
large quantities, was it done ? No ; those heads were 
thrown into the ditches outside the stockade, and 
instead of putting life in their soup, they were left 
to rot and put death in their drink and pestilence in 
the air. 

The statement of Mr. Davis that the prisoners 
were removed in the autumn of 1864 "to other points 



162 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

suitable for their safety and health" is misleading 
and characteristic. 

The prisoners were removed from Andersonville, 
not to preserve their health, but to prevent their 
threatened capture by Sherman, then confronting 
Hood before Atlanta. In this connection the words 
of Hood are interesting and show how valuable was 
the service which even the starving prisoners were 
rendering to the Union cause and tying the hands of 
an army: '■'■The presence of thirty thousand Fed- 
eral 2rrisoners in my rear \ Andersonville^ xjrevented 
me from moving on his \^Sherman^s] rear and de- 
siroying his depot of supplies at Marietta.'''' (See 
"Advance and Retreat," by General J. B. Hood.) 

General Joseph E. Johnston, whose retrogade 
conduct of the campaign had depressed the spirits of 
the Southern people and occasioned clamorous pro- 
tests from the alarmed people of Georgia to Rich- 
mond, gave Mr. Davis a long desired pretext to 
remove him, and the less sagacious but more aggres- 
sive Hood was made his successor. 

Davis came to Atlanta, the old infirmity for 
interference having again taken possession of him, 
and demanded a radical change. Hood was com- 
manded to take an army back to Tennessee, to fall on 
Thomas and destroy him, and do other things that 



''SERENELY ON HIS GREAT MARCH." 163 

would compel Slierman to loosen his hold on the 
throat of Georgia. In a bombastic public speech he 
virtually announced the intended movements of the 
army; and his positive assurances that there was to 
be no more retreats through Georgia delighted the 
citizens and ladies, dismayed the corps commanders, 
and greatly obliged Sherman, who read the speech 
next day at his headquarters, and governing himself 
accordingly prepared to strike for the sea. 

The country knows the sequel: how Sherman 
kept serenely on his great march, and how thoroughly 
and handsomely Thomas, "the Eock of Chicka- 
mauga," disposed of Hood is a chapter of history 
that Mr. Davis remembered with bitter mortification 
to the latest day of his life. The bitter cup was 
subsequently filled to the brim when Slocum planted 
the Union flags over Atlanta, and when at last a 
fierce public clamor and a dire military necessity 
forced upon him the restoration of Johnston, whose 
advice and aid he humbly solicited Avhen Lee had 
surrendered. Eichmond had fallen, and he who 
could but shortly before dictate to the Confederate 
Congress and armies was a powerless and despairiug 
fugitive. 

It was not the first time that the Confederacy 
had paid dearly for Mr. Davis' interference with 
commanders in the field. 



164 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY, 

After the bloody battle of Chickamauga and tlie 
retirement of the Union forces to Chattanooga in 
September, 1863, Mr. Davis had paid a visit to 
Bragg's army, which'had Kosecrans' army shut up 
there. From the palisades on Lookout Mountain he 
examined with his glass the position of the Federal 
troops ; he saw them hemmed in, with the Tennessee 
at their back, and their lines of supplies and com- 
munications held by the Confederates. Before it, 
the Chattanooga "Valley and Missionary Kidge 
stretching to the river on the north, and Lookout 
towering over Moccasin Point below the town like 
an impregnable Gibraltar; all frowning with their 
batteries upon their half-famished foes, who w^ere 
reduced to their last few crackers, and burning roots 
for fuel. Ten thousand horses and mules had died 
of starvation, and there were not animals enough 
left to drag a field battery. 

Mr. Davis saw it all and smiled exultingly. He 
felt assured that the surrender of Rosecrans' army 
was only a question of a few days, or a few weeks at 
the farthest. Bragg could and must now spare a 
corps to send to Knoxville and crush Burnside. 
Accordingly, Longstreet was withdrawn from Look- 
out, whick with its natural strength could be 
securely held by a comparatively small force. 



" THE SILENT BUT INVINCIBLE GRANT." 165 

Having fully submitted liis views to Bragg, and 
deeming his present mission ended, he left for Eich- 
mond; and as he rode he doubtless began the con- 
struction of a proclamation that was to be the 
greatest effort of his life in heralding to the Confed- 
eracy the destruction of two Federal armies, and 
swelled with pride at the anticipated applause that 
was to reward his military genius. 

But events soon followed that wrought a mar- 
velous change in the "President's" programme, and 
taught him once again the vanity of human aspira- 
tions. 

The silent but invincible Grant came riding 
over the mountains without escort but his staff, and, 
passing in sight of the besieging Confederates, 
entered Chattanooga. Rafts were floated past 
Bragg's pickets at the base of Lookout in the night; 
the Confederate force at Brown's ferry was sur- 
prised and captured, and a pontoon bridge was laid 
across the Tennessee. In a few hours communica- 
tions were opened with Bridgeport, thence to Nash- 
ville, and soon an abundance of supplies was 
flowing into the beleaguered camps amid Union 
cheers and music. The , master had come, and 
victory was in his eye. 

On the 24th of November the gallant Hooker, 
with Geary, stormed and carried the heights of 



166 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

Lookout, and the next rising sun revealed to the 
cheering army in the valley beneath the Union 
banner floating from the mountain summit. The 
Confederates were at bay on Missionary Ridge, 
Sherman having crossed on pontoons the Tennessee 
on the north; Hooker, following the routed forces 
from Lookout, crossed Chattanooga creek toward 
Rossville, while Thomas confronted Bragg's center. 

In the afternoon. Hooker having succeeded in 
crossing the creek with his artillery, a signal gun 
fired from Grant's headquarters on Orchard Knob 
was answered by cheers as the whole Union line 
advanced upon the frowning ridge lined at base with 
Bragg's entrenched infantry, and crowned at the top 
with cannon in heavy breastworks. 

Sherman assaulted the Confederate right, 
Thomas the center, and Hooker the left. Sheridan 
led his division on foot up the steep ridge under 
the belching guns of the "Star fort" and its flanking 
trenches. Hooker carried the hills to the Confed- 
erate left, and doubled it up in wild disorder. "Pat" 
Clerbourne's force on the right toward Tunnel Hill 
fought with stubborn valor and resisted Sherman's 
savage assaults long and bravely, and Bragg sent 
reinforcements there. Grant, observing it, dis- 
patched a division to strengthen Sherman. By sun- 



" WITH SHERIDAN HOT AT BRAGGS HEELSy 1G7 

set Thomas had pierced the Confederate center near 
the headquarters of Bragg, who, with his staff, 
barely escaped capture. The Federal artillery of 
Osterhaus from an elevated point on Hooker's line 
raked the Confederate left and rear, and, panic 
seizing it, the whole line crumbled away and fled in 
mad confusion down the eastern side of the ridge, 
leaving artillery, flags and prisoners in the hands of 
the charging and cheering Union victors. The rout 
continued pell-mell toward the Georgia line, with 
Sheridan hot at Bragg' s heels until darkness ended 
the pursuit. 

Had Longstreet's fine corps been left on Lookout 
instead of being sent away at the suggestion, or rather 
dictation of Mr. Davis, the result might have been 
different. The presence of the "President" came to 
be regarded in the army as the shadow of coming 
defeat. 

General Grant, speaking of Mr, Davis' well- 
known and fatal weakness, remarks with grim humor 
on this campaign: "It was not the first time that 
Mr, Davis came to the relief of the Union armies by 
reason of his superior mHitary genius.'''' 

******** 

History furnishes no nobler example of heroism 
than is shown in the readiness with which the Union 



168 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

prisoners met death in its most dreaded forms, and 
spurned the guilty bribes of liberty and life offered 
by their jailers. When death was reaping a ghastly 
harvest, and more than a hundred a day were borne 
out of the death pen at Andersonville, there was a 
standing offer of liberty to those who would renounce 
their allegiance to their country. Among the cap- 
tives were skilled workmen of every trade, whose 
services as mechanics were eagerly desired by the 
Confederate authorities, and were sought on assur- 
ances of freedom, good pay, shelter, food and all 
bodily comforts. 

A beggarly corporal's guard only were induced 
in all those fearful months to yield to the tempters, 
out of the forty-nine thousand Union captives con- 
fined at Andersonville — a bit of heroism that called 
forth one of the most eloquent speeches ever delivered 
by Garfield.* 

On one occasion a number of the prisoners who 
were known as masters of various trades were brought 
out of the stockade where General Cobb, it was 
announced, wished to address them. The prisoners 
were under immediate charge of sergeants selected 
by themselves from the stockade, and fiiced Cobb in 
closed ranks and with close attention. He proceeded 
* Garfield's speech to Union ex-prisoners at Toledo. 



''SACRIFICE THEIR HONOR AS SOLDIERS." 169 

with all the bland persuasive sophistry of which he 
was master, to express regret for the hardships which 
circumstances compelled them to suffer as prisoners 
of war; referred to the liberal terms upon which the 
Confederate Government had struggled to effect an 
exchange, and feelingly deplored their rejection by 
the Federal authorities. By gradual advances he 
reached the point: 

It must be clear to every soldier before him that 
the Government of the United States had abandoned 
them; and having done their duty as soldiers in 
battle, and risked their lives and lost their liberty 
and submitted patiently to the privations of prison 
life, that Government had no right to utterly sacri- 
fice their lives in captivity merely to carry out a 
policy that seemed to promise some temporary mili- 
tary advantage. Under these circumstances, were 
they not justified in accepting their liberation on the 
conditions which he was authorized to offer, and 
which he felt they could do without a scruple or 
sacrifice of their honor as men and soldiers! They 
would, as a matter of form, be required to renounce 
under oath their allegiance to the Federal Govern- 
ment; they would not be required to serve at the 
front with the Confederate army, but would be 
assicrned to certain kinds of work with which their 



170 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

training had acquainted them as mechanics, etc. He 
finished his speech, and scarcely had his last sentence 
been uttered, when every prisoner faced promptly to 
the right and without a single word of response 
marched Avith measured steps back into the stockade. 
Cobb, if he still retained a fragment of conscience, 
must even in his embarrassing failure have felt a 
glow of pride in such an enemy, and must have con- 
trasted in his mind at that moment the heroic 
fidelity of these men as they passed through the gate 
through which few of them would ever return alive — 
with his own record in the past toward his country. 
******** 



CHAPTER X. 

Release of Union Prisoners — Under the 
Stars and Stripes Once More- 
Home ! 

SHE fortunes of my life had made me a par- 
ticipant in stirring events and a witness in 
thrilling scenes. My birthplace was within 
a few miles of the Falls of Niagara, and often in my 
youth I had stood on the cliff and looked into the 
river beneath as it bounded away, after its mighty 
leap, in braiding billows of foam through the rock- 
bound gorge to Ontario. I had listened in awe to 
the deep thunder of the cataract and gazed spell- 
bound and in dumb wonder upon the majestic picture 
formed in the splendor of a rainbow. 

I had seen a beautiful city in flames and 
mothers with their children weeping amid the ruins 
of vanished homes, and had seen the ocean in its 
fiercest wrath from the deck of an imperilled ship. 

As a soldier, I had witnessed victory and defeat 
in the campaigns of McClellan, Pope, Burnside and 
Hooker; had seen an army corps surprised and in 

171 



172 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

the full tide of rout and panic amid bursting shell 
and showering bullets before the cheering and 
charging line of Stonewall Jackson a few hours 
before he fell in the front of my regiment at Chan- 
cellorsville. 

As a wounded prisoner at Gettysburg, I stood 
behind Pickett when his division melted away in my 
siofht in the blaze from Hancock's line, and saw 
Cemetery Ridge fringed with the waving banners of 
the Union victors. 

I marched as a captive with Lee's retreating 
train through the mountain pass at midnight, beside 
the wagons filled with shrieking wounded, amid a 
fierce storm and crashing thunder, when the vivid 
lightning revealed only to the struggling men and 
beasts the narrow and perilous road that overhung 
the deep mountain gorge, while the wind howled 
through the bending pines like lost souls and hosts 
of pursuing demons. 

But none of these scenes, vividly as I recall 
them, ever thrilled and touched me with such depth 
and power as did the release of the Union prisoners 
which I participated in and witnessed in a North 
Carolina meadow on the first day of March, 1865. 
Fortune and fame would have rewarded the artist 



'WO FALTERING IN LOVE FOR THE UNION." 173 

who could have painted that picture, or the pen that 
could fittingly describe it. 

The days of the Confederacy were numbered, 
and a general exchange of prisoners was decided 
upon; but hope seemed to have died out in the 
hearts of the Union captives so utterly that little 
credence was given to the assurances of the Confed- 
erates that their liberation was agreed upon, not- 
withstanding the fact that a marked change in the 
demeanor of the guards and their officers was mani- 
fest during the last fortnight of February. Yet 
amid all this suffering and despair there was no 
faltering in their love for the Union, or a whisper of 
diminished faith in the ultimate triumph of our holy 
cause. Unconquerable love and faith amid unspeak- 
able sufferings was the crowning glory of the Union 
prisoners. 

Those who had their hopes awakened by external 
signs about them gave them no tongue, but jealously 
secreted them as if possessed by some superstitious 
fear that speech might banish the blessing for which 
their souls were wildly thirsting, and which they 
felt by some indefinable instinct was hovering near. 
They moved about mutely, like spectres, among each 
other; a spark of pity seemed at last to have entered 
the hearts of their jailers. The guards relaxed 

13 



174 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

their vigilance, and conversed with freedom and 
some approach to humanity with the poor defense- 
less creatures; there was indeed now little need, of 
guards, for not more than a corporal's guard of 
them had physical strength enough to have walked 
to the Union lines if every sentinel had withdrawn. 

The guards began to let the captives approach 
their path, and even pass it, to get good water. They 
began to hand them tobacco and bread from their 
haversacks, like real hatilefield soldiers. The angel 
oi: peace had whispered to friend and foe. The dead 
line had vanished forever! 

In the last few days of February the prisoners 
of Andersonville, Salisbury, Florence, Millen and 
other places broke camp, and boarding freight trains 
and open platform cars, usually a hundred or more 
to a car, started towards Goldsboro and Ealeigh. 
The Union officers who, a few days before, had 
arrived at Charlotte from Columbia, where they had 
been confined during the winter, were also put on 
board of a freight train and started North. Opinion 
was about equally divided between them as to 
whether this was to be a journey to liberty or to 
another prison. 

The assurances of the Confederple officer in 
charge that they were really on their way to bs 



"UNUSUAL CIVILITY OF THE CONFEDERATES:' 175 

excliangecl was by many whose hearts were sick from 
deferred hope interpreted as a ruse to prevent 
attempts at escape; but tlie unusual civility of the 
Confederates toward us, and the lax manner in which 
the train seemed to be guarded, sent "exchange 
stock" higher than it had touched for a year; and 
although none dared to acknowledge their hopes it 
was impossible to conceal the deep excitement which 
every brightening eye betrayed and the hungry 
yearning that was possessing every heart. 

At Goldsboro the train on which I was with 
fourteen hundred Union officers halted for a few 
hours, and here at daylight several long trains of 
platform cars arrived at the depot packed with our 
poor fellows from Florence, Salisbury and other 
points. The night had been keen and frosty, and it 
was impossible to tell whether the shivering and 
almost naked spectres were white men or negroes. 
Our guards permitted us to approach them, and we 
scanned their thin, wild faces in search of acquaint- 
ances. My brother was among them, and I passed 
the platform car where he was several times, as I 
learned next day. They could hardly answer our 
questions intelligently, or articulate more than to 
piteously appeal to us for a piece of cornbread, a 



176 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

bone, or anythiDg, or to let them warm themselves a 
bit at some fires we had built outside the depot. 

The officers promptly made way and ranged the 
sufferers around the fires, gave them bits of their 
own rags, and gathered fragments of bread which 
they craved but could not masticate with their 
swollen gums and teeth loosened by scurvy. A very 
few had hats or shoes. Some kind women of the 
town brought milk and we fed the weakest with 
spoons. 

Many had died during the cold night ride, and 
I and others took the dead from among the dying on 
the open gravel cars. A humane Confederate officer 
to whom I applied gave me permission with a few 
other comrades to carry a number of the dying to the 
boiler-room of an old saw-mill some distance outside 
the guard line, simply on our promise to return. 
The proprietor of the mill, a kind-hearted man, 
readily allowed us to arrange the poor fellows in 
easy positions before the cheery fires, with bits of 
blankets, old clothes, and some straw under them. 
Those who could not speak expressed their gratitude 
in smiles and looks of mute pathetic eloquence. We 
pressed their hands and then left fhem — and for- 
ever. 

Next morning, March 1st, the long trains of 
captives started toward Wilmington. I was with the 



''PUT PAIN IN EVERY HEARTS 177 

officers ill the advance train, and while I live I shall 
remember the oppressive, strange silence o£ the men 
as the train approached the Union outposts, with a 
large white flag floating over the locomotive. There 
were several stops for water or other purposes, and 
during these delays the faces of the men was an 
interesting study of speechless but keen agony. The 
stop of a few minutes only brought cold perspiration 
to their foreheads and put pain in every heart, and 
once when the locomotive hacked the cars for a short 
distance, a cloud of despair settled like a pall over 
the mute sufferers and a fervent prayer trembled on 
every lip. 

Conversation was affected at times, but it was a 
dismal failure. One thought — one hope was in full 
possession of their souls, and that none dared to 
utter. The day wore on, on leaden wings, and the 
train seemed to be creeping like a snail. At last it 
rounded a curve in the woods and entered a broad 
meadow which was bordered at its eastern side by a 
tall pine forest. On entering this opening the loco- 
motive slackened speed, snuffed like a horse scenting 
a hidden danger, sent up a shrill whistle, and 
stopped ! 

A prisoner in our crowded freight car, with dis- 
tended eyes and a face that revealed his agitation. 



178 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

rose trembling to his bare and bruised feet and 
tottered to the side door and looked out ahead. Every 
eye was on him as he clutched the side of the door, 
and, springing into the air as I have seen men do in 
battle when struck with a bullet, he screamed three 
words that electrified every heart and brought the 
weakest to their feet: " There it is/" 

We crowded to the door; the sentinels made 
way and laid their muskets against the car as we 
leaped to the ground in a tangled heap. Yes, Ihank 
God, there it was at last— The Stars and Stripes! 

One piercing scream of joy went up from the 
famished multitude as they bounded and fell from 
the doorways of the cars, and tears streamed down 
every stained and worn face as the beloved banner 
of the Union, so long hidden from them, floated 
in full beauty and majesty from the top of a tall 
pine. 

Another minute and a quick, eager eye caught 
another sight, and again a wild shout rang over the 
meadow: ^' There tliey aref'' Yes, thank God, out 
from the tall pines a troop of men wearing the loyal 
blue came at a quick measured step, their bayonets 
flashing and an officer leading them toward us! 

Some of our poor fellows, demented by their 
long: trials, not understanding: what it all meant, but 




The sight of their flag. — See page 178. 



''IN RAGS AND WITH WILD EYES." 179 

with the old instinct of escape upon them, in the 
cunning of insanity took advantage of the guards' 
negligence and the prevailing excitement, and hid in 
ditches, or crept under the cars and ran as fast as 
their bare and bruised feet could bear them in the 
direction of their old prisons. The strongest of the 
prisoners chased and brought them back without the 
assistance of the guards, who now paid no attention 
to sentinel duty, but mingled with the excited 
prisoners, and were bidding them a kindly good-bye. 

Other trains followed, and soon a countless 
multitude of blackened, hatless and barefooted skele- 
tons in rags and with wild eyes swarmed out of the 
freight cars, the strongest carrying those who could 
not stand. 

All were ordered to stand and wait for the pre- 
liminaries in progress. The Confederate guards left 
us, and, led by their commanding officer, started to 
meet the Union detachment approaching in the 
meadow. They met, halted, and facing each other 
presented arms in military courtesy, and came to an 
order arms, leaving a lane fifteen feet wide between 
them. The opposing commanders shook hands, con- 
versed aside a few minutes, and drew pencils and 
books from their pockets. 

The eager captives were eyeing these proceed- 
ings in a fever of excitement. The Confederate 



180 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

commander raised his hand and beckoned them to 
advance. Each man, clasping the hand of some 
weak comrade, moved forward, and a silence fell 
over all, as if conscious that they were treading 
hallowed ground. 

As I re-entered our car to recover some trifle, I 
observed a yonng soldier lying on the floor, where 
his comrades in their wild excitement had forgotten 
him. At first I thought he was dead, but his eyes 
looked beseechingly into mine as I came to his side. 
He was a boy, apparently not more than sixteen ; he 
was in rags and barefooted, and a mere skeleton. In 
answer to my question his thin lips moved, but his 
tongue could give no utterance. I remembered now 
that he had been put in our car at Raleigh, and was 
said to be a New York soldier from Andersonville 
prison; but no one knew his name, his acquaint- 
ances, if he had any in prison, being dead. 

I bent over him and told him that we were 
exchanged, that our troops and flag were in sight, 
that we were going home, and that he must go 
with me; I would carry him to Wilmington. The 
feeble smile and sudden light that came into his 
eyes told me touchingly that I was understood. 
I resolved that he should not die a prisoner. I 
picked the boy up tenderly; his weight was not 



''STREAMED IN SCREAMING HUNDREDS." 181 

more than a child's, and a sentinel helped me reach 
the ground with him. 

Meantime the prisoners began to pass through 
the lane between the Union and Confederate troops ; 
and as I bore the poor boy through the gate to 
liberty, the eyes of the Union soldiers glistened with 
tears, for all could see he was near the end. As the 
prisoners passed the point of release in the meadow, 
they broke into a run — those who could run — and 
streamed in screaming hundreds to the woods, near 
which a colored regiment was drawn up along the 
road to salute the prisoners. They were the first 
colored troops I had ever seen, and as the prisoners 
tottered by them in their rags, tears were on their 
dusky cheeks. 

Friendly hands had reared an arch over the road, 
and in leaves and evergreens we read the words, 
." Welcome, brothers.'''' 

The released prisoners had now increased to 
thousands, and as they tossed away their rags and 
threw their wrecked hats into the air, the forest 
rang with their screams of wild joy. The band was 
playing the national airs, and the strongest men and 
the bravest, who had never faltered at the cannon's 
mouth, now gave way to nature's majesty. They 
embraced the trees and kissed the ground, and 



182 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

falling upon their knees the sufferers raised their 
skeleton arms above them, and, with eyes streaming 
with tears, sent up an impassioned thanksgiving to 
God as did the delivered tribes of Israel. 

Some good genii that day seemed to have hung 
Aladdin's lamp over our rags. We had but to touch 
it and the earth blossomed with blessings, and 
heavenly mercy seemed descending like the gentle 
dew over the famished but freed captives. Above 
them the flag of their country waved welcome to the 
wanderers; a flood of thoughts came thick and fast 
upon them, and their hearts were leaping wildly in 
their breasts. Already sweet visions rose before 
them. Already their homes were in sight. The 
sweet melody of their children's voices and holy 
soands of peace and home fell on their ears; and 
wives, mothers and loved ones were waiting at the 
gate! 

"'Tis sweet to hear the honest watch-dog's bark 
Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home; 
'Tis sweet to know an eye will mark our coming, 
And look brighter when we come." 

In pathos that scene beggars description, and can live 
only in the memory of its witnesses. 

I carried my poor burden to the margin of the 
wood, and laid him tenderly down under a tall pine 



" ON LIBERTY'S BRIGHT EDGE." 183 

from whose top the Union flag was floating full to 
the breeze, and where the unknown boy might see it 
wave its benediction over its dying defender. A few 
comrades joined the sad little group and knelt. We 
were not long delayed ; I held his thin hand and a 
prayer was said; and thus on liberty's bright edge, 
with his failing eye resting on his country's flag, 
somebody's darling lay while the angel of death 
touched his cruel fetters and they fell, and his 
immortal spirit mounted to its eternal freedom ! 

As I looked into the tear-dimmed eyes of brave 
men that day, the words of the sAveet old song came 
with their truth and power to my memory as never 
before : 

"Go watch the foremost rank in danger's dark career; 
Be sure the hand most daring there has wiped away a 
tear." 

We followed the road like a disorganized mob; 
no one seemed to be in charge, but soldiers in the 
camps that we were constantly passing pointed us in 
the direction of AVilmington, and soon it came in 
sight. There was a group of prisoners who had in 
the different prisons been my most intimate com- 
panions and several of them had shared with me in 
the perils and sufferings of five escapes. Those 
whom I shall here name had but a week before 



184 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

escaped with me from Charlotte by running the 
"dead-line" at night under the fire of the sentinels. 
None of our party was hit, but a bullet through my 
blouse collar showed a close escape. One poor 
fellow on the same night, in making the attempt to 
escape, was shot and killed. His bride, hearing of 
the prospective exchange, was waiting for him at 
Wilmington. 

My immediate companions were Lieutenant 
Wm. Bierbower, Lieutenant Eugene Weeks, Captain 
Harry G. Dodge, Captain George L. Schell, and 
Captain Wm. H. Nash. This group formed a subject 
for which a painter might have sought in vain within 
the range of civilization. We had all retained the 
staffs used to help us through the swamps in our late 
escape, and our appearance collectively suggested 
the witches in Macbeth. Who ever has seen Char- 
lotte Cushman in the character of Meg Merrilies 
would see her costume outdone in that of Bierbower. 
Weeks' chief covering consisted of half a blanket 
which he boasted had gone through the Mexican war. 
The number and size of its holes invited from Dodge 
the observation that the rebellion had gone through 
the blanket. Dodge wore on his head the rim of a 
Confederate hat, and his long light hair floated in a 
fantastic tassel through the crown; his pantaloons 



"■FOND MEMORIAL OF HIS CAVALRY SERVICE:'' 185 

resembled in their varied patches the ruin of a 
crazy quilt; he had on one foot a broken shoe of 
immense size, while the opposite leg was hidden from 
view in the top of a tall cavalry boot; but as there 
was no foot whatever to it, we all suspected that he 
retained it simply as a fond memorial of his cavalry 
service. 

Schell had no hat at all, his head being wrapped 
in an ancient bandana; his shoes he had made him- 
self out of the sleeves of his coat, and as he had no 
shirt his arms were entirely bare. The ragged 
remainder of the coat was secured at the throat with 
a piece of rope, which gave one the impression that 
he had just escaped lynching as a witch. 

Nash, who was the tall man of the party, had 
months bef oi*e in some unknown way come in posses- 
sion of a pair of tight riding pants several sizes too 
small for him, the bottoms barely reaching his knees. 
He had on his feet an old torn pair of carpet slip- 
pers, and as he had no stockings nor underclothing, 
and had a hood made from a piece of an army 
blanket on his head and a portion of a gray jacket 
clinging to his shoulders, he would have preserved a 
small farm easily from the devastation of crows. 

As for myself, I was a poem in rags. I had the 
mere remnant of the summer blouse and pantaloons 



186 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

I had worn when captured at Gettysburg twenty 
months before. The sleeves of the blouse I had 
long since sacrificed to make stockings with, and now 
my feet were covered only with the sleeves of my 
old red flannel shirt. Strings and wooden skewers 
kept my tattered raiment clinging to my frail form, 
for I had not one button in my entire wardrobe. I 
wore on my head the rim of a chip hat, and what was 
left of my old flannel shirt I clung to desperately; it 
had now no sleeves, and from my frequent and 
unskilful washing it had shrunk to such a degree 
that persons at a distance might have mistaken it for 
a coral necklace. Since it was of no visible use 
except for my sore throat, I was openly charged by 
my friends with wearing it around my neck for mere 
style. If my mother had met me then, I had no 
apparent means of convincing her that I was her son, 
except possibly by my vaccination marks. 

Thus our group entered Wilmington on the first 
day of March, 18G5. 

Several thousands of the released prisoners had 
preceded us, and as we walked on in the middle of 
the street without any fixed destination, soldiers and 
citizens gazed on the tattered multitude from the 
sidewalks and windows. None of us presumed to 
walk on the sidewalk beside clean and civilized 



"MY TORN COSTUME AND DISMAL PLIGHT:' 187 

people; we kept the middle of the street, and 
trudged aimlessly, homelessly, and happily on. 

Suddenly from a group of soldiers and citizens 
on the sidewalk I heard my name called, and looking 
up saw a citizen approaching with extended hand. 
Instantly, to my joy, I recognized Mr. William 
Gutter, formerly the sutler of my regiment. How 
he knew me he could hardly explain himself, as he 
surveyed me in my torn costume and dismal plight. 
In a few words he gladdened me with the informa- 
tion that he was now the proprietor of a large store, 
where, he said, I could get "anything from a needle 
to an anchor," and pay for it when Uncle Sam paid 
me, that solid old relative being then in my debt for 
nearly two years' pay as a lieutenant. 

He insisted that I should go with him forth- 
with and be scrubbed, clothed and fed, and restored 
to some semblance of a Christian. I gratefully 
accepted his generous offer, only on the condition 
that .my destitute companions might share in my 
good fortune, to which he cheerfully assented; and 
after presenting them severally we followed our kind 
friend to his store, keeping at a respectfiil distance, 
that kept him laughing the whole way. 

We entered his store, a substantial three-story 
brick building, filled with soldiers making all kinds 

14 



188 BASTJLES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

of purchases, and saw at once that the extent and 
variety of its commodities fully justified his descrip- 
tion. We pushed our way to the back of the store; 
a clerk proceeded to take our measures for neat blue 
fatigue suits, shoes, hats, and all. This done, we were 
led up-stairs and given "something to warm us" in 
our host's private apartments. 

After a merry chat, a stout and smiling colored 
servant entered and, bowing, electrified us with the 
announcement: "Gemmen, yo' baffs is ready!" A 
bath! Clean clothes! Our dinner ordered! The 
steamer at the dock to take us to Annapolis next 
morning, where two years' pay and a thirty days' 
furlough awaited us! 

It was too much for poor tramps to have 
crowded into one day. We all cried again, and bit 
our fingers, and stuck ourselves with pins, to see if 
this was not another of those visions of sleep that 
had so often illumined the darkness of those fearful 
prisons. 

We followed our dusky guide to the upper loft, 
which was unoccupied save by some miscellaneous 
storage. There was a large tub for each of us, two- 
thirds full of clear water in a tepid state ; beside each 
was a chair on which was laid a heap of good rough 
towels and a generous chunk of castile soap. I 



''WOULD BE BASE INGRATITUDE." 189 

smelt the soap, fondled it, and had a strong impulse 
on me to eat it. 

Several more servants entered and laid our new 
clothes out on the floor. These outfits were com- 
plete, and included underclothing, neat shoes, stock- 
ings, handkerchiefs, tooth-brushes, etc., with our 
names pinned to our property. There was an abund- 
ance of good running water in the room. The 
colored man swept our piled rags out the back 
window, and they were promptly set fire to; he then 
left us with the assurance that we would not be dis- 
turbed; we bolted the door, gave three cheers, and 
" went in." 

But, as the novelist would say, "let us draw the 
curtain over this scene." If the reader thinks this 
is giving undue prominence to so ordinary a thing 
as a bath, let him put himself in our place, and bear 
in mind that to us such a bath was no ordinary 
thing, but a blessing rich and rare, and to ignore it 
in this narrative would be base ingratitude. 

When, in half an hour, arrayed in our new 
suits, we came down to Mr. Cutter's rooms, where he 
awaited us with "something to keep the chill off," he 
pointed us out with pride to several Union Generals 
who had "called in to see a man." Here the fra- 
grance of an approaching dinner reached our senses 



190 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

that made us quickly lose interest in tlie conversa- 
tion. But our kind host was not quite done with our 
preparation, and the dinner was to be ready in three- 
quarters of an hour. 

He led us down the street a couple of squares 
and into a neat barber shop, where in a few minutes 
each of us was given a chair. Our long locks were 
neatly cropped. We were shampooed, polished with 
stiff brushes and combed until our scalps fairly 
glowed, and we stepped into the street fragrant with 
cologne. We started towards Mr. Cutter's, passing 
on the way several groups of our late fellow pris- 
oners, who, being still in rags, made way for us, and 
gazed after us with the puzzled look of men who 
vaguely thought they had seen us before. We each 
felt certain that never before had these men looked so 
utterly poverty-stricken. We returned with proper 
courtesy the salutations of those who recognized us, 
but as we had an engagement we did not encourage 
extended conversation. 

AVe had gone but a little distance when I 
recognized Lieutenant John Davidson, of the 6th 
New York Heavy Artillery, an old fellow-prisoner, 
approaching. He was accompanied by an emaciated, 
blackened and tattered spectre. Davidson, pointing 
to his companion, asked: "Do you know this com- 



''THE BLOODY PEACH ORCHARD." 191 

rade?" I looked at the poor wreck, and a strange 
instinct rather than any external sign told me, in 
^pite of dirt and rags, that I knew that face and 
form; but before my scrutiny was completed, the 
voice that pronounced my name revealed to me — my 
brother Patrick. He had, unknown to me, been 
wounded and captured near Petersburg the year 
before, and had suffered at Danville, Salisbury and 
Florence while I was held at other prisons. He was 
my eldest brother and a private in the 5 th Michigan 
Infantry. This was my first meeting with him since 
half an hour before the battle opened in the bloody 
Peach Orchard at Gettysburg, where he had bade 
me good-bye, his unvarying custom on the eve of a 
battle. 

He was indeed a sad wreck. I could not, how- 
ever, induce him to return with me to Mr. Cutter's 
store, to be provided for like myself, preferring, he 
said, to wait until he reached Annapolis, for which 
place he was to leave with other enlisted men by 
steamer that evening. I got him to accept some 
refreshments and some money, however, and promis- 
ing to Ineet me soon at home he went ofP radiant 
enough, enjoying a good cigar, which could ever 
make him happy. 



192 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

Poor fellow! the cruel marks of his captivity 
and wounds were afterwards carried to his grave. 
As each of us stood there that day of our happy 
deliverance, we little dreamt that our dear young 
brother Thomas had died at Andersonville six months 
before! It was a merciful ignorance that gave us 
that one day of happiness in our soldier lives. 

Our transformed party returned to Mr. Cutter's 
store, and were taken upstairs to the private dining- 
room and seated around a large circular table. A 
door opened, and the aroma that assailed our senses 
was positively overpowering. Heaven only knows 
how welcome it was to men who had known the 
dreadful torment of ceaseless hunger for so many 
fearful months. We were surveying the white table 
cloth, the napkins, the shining glasses, bright knives 
and dishes, and several general officers had asked as 
a special favor to be allowed to stay in the room and 
see us eat that dinner. 

It was soon borne in by waiters and laid smok- 
ing hot before us. How can I hope to describe that 
banquet! I will not desecrate the delightful 
remembrance of it by a tame and tasteless chronicle 
of the savory edibles; let it be remembered that 
in all those terrible months we had never tasted 
coffee or tea, and now it was steaming before us in 
neat cups, hot and delicious. 



"■SPRINKLED THEIR PIE WITH HAPPY TEARS." 193 

How the steaks, eggs, ham and smoking 
potatoes, hot biscuits and sweet butter melted away 
before us! How we winked and exchanged with 
each other in pantomime the speechless expression 
of our happiness! Schelland Dodge sprinkled their 
pie with happy tears, and the rest of us could barely 
resist the impulse of putting the remnants of the 
repast in our pockets. 

The banquet over, we lit cigars and went forth 
for a stroll over the town, and with an air of pro- 
prietorship that created a positive shade of coolness 
between us and our late prison comrades, whom we 
were frequently passing. What a smiling, friendly 
look everything about us seemed to have ! How we 
all talked at the same time, like roystering school- 
boys, about the happy home-returning, now so near! 

It is not often in the lives of men that so mucli 
of happiness follows so swiftly upon so much, suffer- 
ing, and is showered upon them in a single day. 

It is said that death is sometimes caused by 
both sudden grief and sudden joy. Certain it is that 
many deaths occurred that day among the released 
prisoners, and, judging from what I saw then among 
men whom long and cruel sufferings of mind and 
body had reduced and unnerved to the danger point, 
I am convinced that in the wild tumult of their 



194 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

sudden happiness there was more than one instance 
where the feeble spark of life was extinguished in 
the flood of joy that overwhelmed them on the bright 
shore of liberty. 

On March 2d we boarded the steamer General 
Sedgwick and steamed out to Cape Fear in sight of 
Fort Fisher, upon whose ramparts our brave com- 
rades had so recently planted the Stars and Stripes ; 
and after a rough night off the North Carolina coast 
we entered the Chesapeake and landed at the Naval 
Academy, Annapolis, where we were greeted with 
music and cheers and a royal welcome. 

The quaint old Maryland capital was soon 
swarming with prisoners; the enlisted men finding 
comfortable quarters and good fare in the barracks 
at "Camp Parole," adjacent to the town, while the 
officers, having the liberty of the city, sought 
quarters in the hotels, or were given accommodations 
in private residences. The little postoffice and the 
telegraph office were soon besieged by eager throngs 
of the prisoners, and mails were soon speeding and 
every wire humming with the glad tidings of their 
liberation to their loved ones. 

Within a few days, under a general order, three 
months' pay proper was given to the men "on 
account," and this generous promptness of the Gov- 



"HOST OF THEIR MARTYRED BROTHERS:' 195 

ernment, which for once iu history broke loose from 
red tape, was quickly followed by the issuance of 
thirty days' furlough to each officer and soldier. 

And thus, after unparalleled trials in which 
enduring afPection for each other had been welded in 
the fire of long suffering, old comrades bade each 
other a loving God-speed and farewell, and forgot 
not to shed their tears of sympathy for the host of 
their martyred brothers sleeping at Andersonville, 
Salisbury, Millen, Florence and Belle Isle. 

I was made happier still by the prompt and 
kind notice of my Colonel, Michael W. Burns, of my 
promotion from Second Lieutenant to Captain of my 
company, my commission from Governor Fenton 
dating the first of March, 1865, the day of my 
release from a captivity of twenty months in six 
prisons, during which I had made five escapes, being 
each time re-taken. In a few days, with my furlough 
in my pocket and happiness in my heart, I was on 
the train speeding home. 

A month from then the curtain went down at 
Appomattox. The great Kebellion, with its blood, 
bitterness and tears, and the cruel Bastiles of the 
Confederacy, were things of the pathetic past. 



CHAPTER XL 

Twenty-live Years After— ''Peace on Earth; 
Good Will Toward Men.'' 

ON the second of July, 1888, exactly twenty-five 
years after I had been wounded and taken 
prisoner near the gate of the Sherfy house 
at Gettysburg, I re- visited the great battle-field. I 
stood with my daughter beside me, and some visit- 
insT comrades and friends, on the summit of " Eound 

o 

Top." A group of visitors, including some Confed- 
erates, with their wives beside them, around us, their 
children mingling with those of the Union veterans, 
were searching in merry and eager rivalry for bul- 
lets and stray mementoes of the battle. A guide was 
pointing out the places and objects of greatest inter- 
est to the audience, as all gazed in rapture over the 
magnificent valley stretching away before us, clothed 
in the emerald robe of summer. 

A few yards behind us rose the rocky spur 
where a stone marks the spot where Vincent and 
Hazlett died together in the hot struggle for Round 
Top. Beside us, the steep declivity up which our 

196 



''BLOODY AND INACCESSIBLE GRAVES." 197 

Union artillerists had dragged their guns with ropes 
in those critical moments in which the gallant, 
quick-eyed Warren had bid the signal flags keep 
waving, as he dashed away to hurry up the 
approaching infantry. Below us, from the glen, rose 
the moss-bearded and weird rocks of Devil's Den, 
whose crests and niches had given shelter to the 
crouching Southern sharpshooters, and whose deep, 
ghostly caverns had given them bloody and inacces- 
sible graves. 

Among us stood a group of Signal Corps 
veterans with their flags, and these were waving to 
the distant Seminary Ridge, not the old signals of 
battle, but the nobler messages of peace. Inter- 
preted, these were the words: "■Peace on earth, good 
ivill toivards men''''; and they were borne across the 
battle-field to the Seminary cupola from which Lee 
had watched the struggle in '63. 

From the base of the hill where we stood, a 
narrow, quiet lane stretched along and bordered the 
wheat field, passing monuments that stood like white 
sentinels to mark the line where the Emmetts- 
burg road enters the bloody Peach Orchard and goes 
creeping toward the town. Along this angled line it 
was that the Third Corps, under the gallant Sickles, 
had met the savage assault of Longstreet in the 



198 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

second day's battle, and where the soldiers of the 
North and South lay across each other in mangled 
and ghastly heaps. 

To the right, beyond the low swale, still stood 
the "little clump of trees" on which Lee had fixed 
his eyes at the supreme moment in the last day, and 
where he cast the losing die of Confederacy in 
Pickett's furious onset. 

Still beyond rose the slope to the beautiful 
Cemetery Hill, with its semi-circle of graves. Sum- 
mer vines and roses canopied the little pavillion 
where the martyred President and Emancipator had 
uttered words of eloquence that will outlast the 
monuments that symbolize the nation's gratitude to 
its slain defenders. From her white throne rising 
above the green summit the fair Liberty goddess 
looks lovingly down upon the peaceful graves of her 



Beyond the town and valley the Blue Mountain 
wall goes rolling through fair Maryland, and rocky 
gateways curtained in soft haze mark the mountain 
paths to the valley of the Cumberland, once the 
blazing path of the invader from the Susquehanna to 
the Potomac. 

As we gazed in awe over the superb scene, 
recallinsr the hour when these hills rocked under the 



''LEE'S RETREATING AND DEFEATED HOST." IQQ 

deafening thunder of cannon, and looked upon the 
fields beneath us smiling with golden-bearded wheat 
and tasselling corn, where death once gathered a 
cruel and crimson harvest and two great armies had 
faced each other for three days in a leaden hurricane 
of death, what memories the scene invoked! "What 
blood and tears, what heartburn and woe our country 
had known since last I saw this field in the battle 
smoke! What mighty events and marvellous changes 
in the land since I crossed yonder mountains in a 
fierce midnight storm with Lee's retreating and 
defeated host! 

The fields were now humming with the sounds 
of peace ; monuments rose on every hand ; and as far 
as the eye could reach showed patriotic pilgrims and 
gray-haired veterans where horse, rider, friend and 
foe had gone down in one red burial. 

From the branches of a cedar a red-breasted 
robin was sending up his melody of peace — a love 
greeting to the living and a tender requiem for the 
dead; while over all the majestic panorama the 
descending sun slied its divine halo. 

The soldier who has learned amid suffering the 
true significance of the words "my country" cannot 
look upon such a picture unmoved. None can love the 
child like the mother who has suffered for its sake. 



200 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

None can love the land like the soldier who has bled 
and endured all for its preservation in battle-field 
aind dungeon. To know how sweet a thing is liberty, 
it must be seen through prison bars. To see the 
beauty of our flag and comprehend the true signifi- 
cance of the beloved emblem, it must be hidden 
from the eyes of its followers in arctic nights, and 
from its defenders suffering for months and years in 
the cruel dungeons of the foe, then suddenly through 
the night of despair shine forth from the shore of 
liberty like the rainbow and the glow of the aurora. 
The soldier who thus stands on Round Top and 
views the majestic picture before him, and remem- 
bers the story those hills and valleys tell, will find 
the words of Scott whispering to his heart: 

" Breathes there a man with soul so dead 
Who never to himself hath said: 
' This is my own — my native land!' " 

A soldier's benediction on our country, from the 
pebbled beach of Superior to the everglades and 
orange groves along the southern gulf, and from sea 
to sea! 

Hail and God-speed to the ship of state, with 
her precious freight of freedom! New dangers may 
indeed arise, and false lights seek to lure her to 
dangerous rocks and treacherous shoals. But the 



''HER HIGH AND HOLY DESTINY:' 201 

same divine hand that guided her through the red 
tempest of the Rebellion will be her pilot still. 
Patriots yet unborn will be on her decks to defend 
her, and Washington's warning, "Eternal vigilance 
is the price of liberty," will ever be her watchword 
as she speeds majestically on her course to the 
shining shores of her high and holy destiny. 

"Fear not each sudden sound and shock; 
'Tis of the wave, and not the rock, 
'Tis but the flapping of the sail, 
And not a rent made by the gale. 
In spite of rock and tempest roar. 
In spite of false hghts on the shore, 
Sail on! nor fear to breast the sea; 
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee ; 
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, 
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears. 
Are all with thee, are all with thee." 



Mkz^m^ 



^//■^f'.'^"'Ui^^^ 



B«?ert 0,1,.-. ... ■:iifl8Ctlllt, 



